


The Trouble with Kilgrave

by thelongcon (rainer76)



Series: The Trouble with Kilgrave [1]
Category: Jessica Jones (TV), X-Men (Movies)
Genre: Antagonistic Relationship, CBT, Extreme AU, Forced Orgasm, Mental Powers, Metal Powers, Michael Fassbender's Erik, Multi, No happy endings, Piercings, Set in and around Sin Bin, Sounding, Tennant's Kilgrave, Torture, bad language, genital piercings, humblers, multiple POVs, non-con, slow descent into Stockholm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-21
Updated: 2016-05-08
Packaged: 2018-05-08 03:56:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 7
Words: 62,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5482433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainer76/pseuds/thelongcon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If the characters in Jessica Jones are the pilot fish of the mcu 'verse, then Kilgrave just got swallowed by a shark.  This is a kilgrave torture fic, heed the tags</p><p>"You won't need it.  Kilgrave is not a telepath." It’s gutting to know every thought could be broadcast, that someone could peer into your soul and know for a fact you were mundane, your concerns trivial. Jessica can think of a long list of people – senators, black ops, herself - who would have murdered for a helmet with protective properties, or would have murdered to make it stop. She eyes him sidelong, remembering how Erik had folded his old bones on a dirty floor, how he had cradled Mei Jong to his hollow chest. “You didn’t look scared of telepaths the first time I met you.”  Mei had been the last of her kind, and Erik had looked as if his whole world had been salted and burned - the landscape irrevocably scorched.</p><p>“Once,” Erik grits out. “I was more afraid than most.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is by far one of the weirdest and most disturbing stories I've ever written, special thanks to Kernezelda who had this fic dropped on her head like an anvil. And Subtilior for her incredible help and suggestions

He’s not good at patience, never been his thing. There was small need when Kilgrave – Kevin, Jessica sneers, plain-old-boring-Kevin – could have whatever he wanted with a twist of thought, a rush of desire; he’s learning the ins and outs of it now, this boring game of chance, locked in a cell with water lapping at his feet, reduced to reading lips.

Hogarth is his way out. Kilgrave is pinning a contingency plan on her and he _will_ get out - he’ll kill every person in the room except for sweet Jess.

He’s going to flay them for every shock, injection, punch he’s taken. He’s not ten anymore, part of Kilgrave rages, and they can’t do this to him. All it takes is one slip. The application of outward pressure, a promise of payment; one motive at odds with everyone else and he’ll snap forward with every speck of compulsion he retains.

Kilgrave sits on the metal bunk with one foot up, the other swirling idle patterns through the water. His eyes remain fixed on the people in the opposite room. Help Me is scrawled on the window in block print. The half-eaten burger smells like poison in the recycled air and his clothes are soaked through. Bruises are livid on his skin.

_Her_ bruises.

He’s cold. He has the feeling Jessica doesn’t give a shit about his personal comfort though – rude - considering the plush hotels he allowed her to stay at.

Well, hello, he muses, and perks up as the two sisters bicker. Patsy’s fine brows are drawn together, her expression pinched. Jessica shakes her head in return and motions toward the door. The pin-up girl for child pornography looks unhappy, blonde hair swinging in the light; she’s biting her lip as she says sharply, _Are you sure?_

_I couldn’t find his parents,_ Jessica retorts. _I don’t see what other choice we have._

No surprise there.

Kilgrave has wanted to find his parents for thirty odd years. They have proven exceptionally good at hiding, scurrying away in the dark like ship-rats. He rolls off the bunk, splashes through the ankle-deep water until he’s at the window, his posture an insouciant slouch against the metal framework, finger tracing the message on the wall. Both women look at him briefly. Jessica’s eyes flicker toward the electrical switch, and Kilgrave does his best not to tense. The fine hairs on his arm stand on end.

He’s been shocked three times already, electricity strong enough to obliterate every thought in his mind. Spasms that left his body aching and sore. More pressing than the memory of pain is the thought of biology. “I’ll shite myself if you do that again,” he warns. “Jess, I’ve been in this room for a day.” Or thereabouts. Kilgrave lost track of time after the first zap of current, the watch on his wrist is permanently frozen at 9:45 pm.

He taps the glass politely and wags his index finger no. “Don’t,” he announces, slow and clear.

Whether she understands or not, Jessica turns away from the switch.

Kilgrave leans his forehead against the window, coolness against his brow, eyes half slitted. It’s nice to think she heard him, was influenced by his discomfit; it’s nice to think he’s in her thoughts in some manner. Jessica Jones has certainly been on Kilgrave’s mind. On the rear wall his boyhood image sobs, re-loops, replays, starts over again. Worse than cell phones or the buzz of fluorescent lighting is this soundtrack of youthful torment. He hasn’t rested, those screams (his – other children) are rendered louder if Kilgrave so much as closes his eyes, and exhaustion is a blurry fog. _You’re cruel_ , he thinks. _Jessica, my sweet bitch, you’re incalculably cruel._

“You could turn the heating up if it’s not so much trouble.”

You could lie down on the El; feel the vibration of an approaching train. You could peel the skin off your hands, or scoop one eyeball out with a metal spoon, eat it, raw and slow. You could let me go. Follow my every whim. You could scream yourself hoarse. You could lie still as a ragdoll when I fuck you. It’s a way of marking time, Kilgrave supposes, imagining fantasies that are soon to become reality. He hates this withering confinement, this trap she so aptly set.

Unwisely, Jessica continues to ignore him, focusing on corpse numero uno instead. _Besides, Trish, he owes me a payment._

_Jesus, Jess._

_Go,_ Jessica reassures. _Please, Trish, just leave._

The sister disappears down the staircase and for the moment, it’s just the two of them, partitioned by glass. Jessica sits down on the chair, toggles the mike to the on position. “There’s a bed-pan in the corner. I suggest you use it.”

Kilgrave’s chest cinches. He eyes Jessica’s hand, monitoring the space between her fingers and the switch. “To be fair, water-sports is not one of my kinks. Anxiety performance.”

“Would you prefer I look the other way?”

“I’d prefer if you didn’t use the shocks at all. Or better yet, give up this charade.” Kilgrave looks directly at the camera, the red flash of its beady light trained on him. “Honestly, if I had powers do you think I would have let you beat me? Throw me against a wall? No sane person would, Jess. Just let me go, I’m begging you.”

“Begging,” Jessica repeats, flatly.

“You,” Kilgrave confirms.

 

&&

 

Damp hair, body half-turned away, and Jessica assumes the camera doesn’t pick up the glint in his eye, or how one side of his mouth hooks. “You’re a regular Oscar contender, I’ll give you that,” she announces dryly, and plants both feet on the desk, pushes her spine against the chair-back.

“A better actor than your girl Patsy?” He isn’t allowed to mention Trish; Jessica lets her hand stroke the button. Kilgrave loses the smirk right fast. He flinches, before he blows the air out from between his cheeks. “Are you torturing me for the sake of torturing?” he asks, pointedly: “How very heroic, Miss Jones, from behind the safety of your glass too.”

“I’m not going to hurt you; not anymore than I already have; but someone else is. Badly. I’m just giving you the chance not to be humiliated.”

Kilgrave’s expression freezes. “Jessica,” he says softly. “You know how much I love you. Privacy - a chance to reason - it’s all I asked.” He sounds so earnest, inflated with his own sense of poisonous charm.

“Hardly.” It’s an effort not to lash out. Jessica peruses Hope’s files as she waits, studies the faces of her slaughtered parents, and gives no further attention to the man trapped opposite her.

Eventually, Kilgrave uses the pan and sits hunched, far away from it. “I’m going to make Trish sit on a metal pike fence,” he slurs, his list of punishments having grown exponentially with each replay of the tape. “I’m going to watch her slow impalement with glee – I’ll make you watch it.”

She flips a page over. “True love.”

“Oh, believe me, I am _devoted_.”

She’s stretching the kinks out of her spine when the knock on the door arrives – polite for him; in her experience Erik wasn’t so reserved. Jessica thuds down the stairs and checks the security feed for the vestibule. Same long coat, same out-dated fedora. Jessica disengages the locks, yanks the heavy door open and grouses: “What took you so long?”

The man who raises his head to the light is smooth-cheeked, with reddish-brown hair. He’s _young_.

Simpson missed another team, is her first thought, Kilgrave must have had a second set of eyes on him, a back-up security detail, their position compromised. Jessica rushes the stairs because she hasn’t gone through this shit – listened to Kilgrave - just to have him snatched away to safety again, fuck that shit. Jessica tucks her fist to her breastbone, slams an elbow into the agent’s face, pivoting her feet and hips for maximum torque.

His entire body lurches to the left and down. She sees a black bag drop from his shoulder, something hard and metallic clatters onto the road. On her toes, Jessica drops the centre of her weight sideways, knees him in the mid-riff with force. He goes flying, knocked clean off the pavement and onto the bitumen, landing on his posterior. She follows. Jessica chases after him like a bulldog.

Hunched, she’s waiting for bullets to pepper the sidewalk; for Kilgrave’s detail to announce themselves. Jessica’s lines up her foot to kick him in the face when the nearby street light dips like a limp noodle, wraps strangling-tight around her torso. She’s yanked off her feet, held aloft. The toe of her foot misses his chin by a mere millimetre. “I am Erik!” he spits out.

“The hell you are!” she rages back.

“I hired you to find Mei Jong!”

He wipes the blood from his chin – it’s running freely from his nose - and squints at Jessica harshly. The street-pole, wrapped tight as a python around her, shines a puddle of yellow light around him, illuminating his features and giving her a clear view. Her breath draws in.

The first time they met Erik had been sitting cross-legged at her desk – the Alias Investigations sign newly painted on her door – the fedora was balanced on his knee-cap and Erik’s shoulders were straight in the long lines of his coat. His full head of hair was snowy white, face creased with age lines. Erik looked like someone’s kindly old grandfather until he spoke – then Jessica revisited her first assessment and upgraded him to ‘mean old geriatric,’ the type who would trip up unsuspecting people on the sidewalk with a cane.

Erik had slid a photograph over her pock-marked desk - with its gouged wood, its broken drawers - and introduced himself with a single sentence: “I’m looking for a mutant.” Mei Jong was seven years old, a second generation Canadian on the wrong side of the border, and she was smiling happily in the photograph he presented.

Dubiously, Jessica asked. “What? Is she your granddaughter?”

“A telepath,” Erik had corrected.

Jessica put her index finger on the photo and slid it back. “Then she’s already dead…dying.”

“Charles’ records indicate her ability is latent.” A fine tremor ran through Erik’s body, his left hand shook uncontrollably on the armrest. “The virus might not take hold. She might be immune. Either way, I need to find her.”

There wasn’t much to go on, last whereabouts, some primary school friends, a few eyewitness reports matching Mei’s description near the derelict fish markets. Jessica had run ragged on the case, forty-eight hours of solid legwork with no sleep. It helped – to not think about things back then. It wasn’t like she was resting much after the bus-crash anyway.

Dogged, Jessica found a lead but by the time they got there it was already too late – Mei Jong died of pleurisy aspiration, bleeding from eyes, ears, nose and throat. Erik sat beside the girl – holding her hand.

In the background, Jessica absolutely _was_ freaking out.

She’d heard of the virus but never witnessed an infected telepath before. In person it looked pneumococcal – some variation of Ebola – it looked contagious. Jessica was wondering how to get out of the building pronto when a child’s voice whispered soft in her mind - Don’t be scared. It’s not designed for you. Her accent was exotic, all of her ‘s’ lisped until the pronunciation of words ran together. Mutant abilities didn’t manifest until adolescence - the few times they arrived early, it was due to trauma, or an extreme sickness. Erik had closed his eyes when the girl’s voice sounded in their heads. Latent telepathy, apparently, was no defence at all. The girl couldn’t speak through the blood in her throat but she spent her last few moments trying to comfort them, staring at Erik in wonder. He held Mei until her reassurances faded – her soft Thank you – like the chime of a bell. Afterward, he handed Jessica a wad of cash for services rendered.

“She was the last.” His eyes were dull. Every piece of metal in the derelict factory was rattling.

“Keep it.” Jessica argued. She couldn’t drag her eyes from Mei, at her heart-shaped face with its gory teardrops, her dress with the Paddington Bear print on the fabric. She felt sick, and wouldn’t take cash from a man who was ready to tear the building to its foundations, so strong was his grief.

It was her first job as a PI, Jessica’s first failure, too. “Wasn’t like I was fast enough to make a difference,” she dismissed, the words twisting inside of her.

Harshly, Erik said: “She didn’t die _alone_. Take it.”

Exhausted, every fibre of her wanted to sleep. “I’d only spend it on booze anyway.”

She ignored the payment and rode the trains for the rest of the night. With her hood over her head she could rest that way sometimes, knowing her body was in constant flight.

Mei’s corpse, she assumed, was something Erik buried, when he flattened the building and tore the factory to shreds.

 

 

 

Point was, Erik Lehnsherr was born in 1932.

 

 

 

In the here and now: Erik clambers to his feet. In his apparent mid-thirties, Erik’s handsome, tall with a well-defined body, a predator’s slow gait; his eyes are the chilly whitecaps of a roiling ocean. His temperament is the same – the same jaw-dropping extent of his power on show, too - he lowers Jessica with a desultory wave.

On terra firma, Jessica hesitates. She’s seen all manner of weird shit – up to and including herself. Jessica’s seen the Big Guy swinging between skyscrapers, aliens tearing apart the New York skyline, but she can’t stop herself from gaping at Erik’s appearance. As an old man, he had shaken with palsy; as an adult in his prime, he emanates black rage like a low-pressure warning. “Your plastic surgeon must make a killing,” she deadpans.

He picks up the bag, tucks a metal helmet under one armpit and indicates the door to the black site with a curt nod.

“Thanks for coming,” Jessica adds, softly. The helmet is near Roman in design, austere, she imagines, probably works for Erik. “I haven’t seen you with that before.”

“No need… since the telepaths perished.”

“Then you won’t need it now. Kilgrave’s not a telepath. He can’t read people’s thoughts. I’ve never heard his voice inside my head.” Only in waking nightmares that left her fighting shadows, or putting an elbow through a train window. The number 7 to Hudson Yards tended to be drafty.

“Then what does he do?” Erik asks impatiently. “Empathy, compulsion –?”

“That!” She nods, slams the door shut, and re-sets the security protocols to the black site. “He says something aloud and you wind up doing it. Forced.” Erik looks grim. He settles the helmet on his head at the bottom of the stairs and starts climbing two at a time. Jessica keeps apace. “You won’t need it. The facility is secure. The cell we have him in is the safest way to interact.”

Erik’s expression is a comment in itself. Halfway up the stairs he relents with the stony silence. “The compound in the helmet is unique, the only one in the world; it stops mental ‘persuasion’ of any form.”

There was a big hoo-ha and cry-out over the virus - but the truth was most people were relieved it targeted only a select few - and everybody on the planet could breathe easy knowing their thoughts were secluded again. Speeches were made, vows to find those responsible were sworn, but once the politicians were off-camera a silent heave of relief went unremarked around the world.

Telepaths weren’t comfortable mutants to be around.

It’s gutting to know every thought could be broadcast, that someone could peer into your soul and know for a fact you were mundane, your concerns trivial. Jessica can think of a long list of people – senators, black ops, herself - who would have murdered for a helmet with protective properties, or would have murdered to make it stop. She eyes him sidelong, remembering how Erik had folded his old bones on a dirty floor, how he had cradled Mei Jong to his hollow chest. “You didn’t look scared of telepaths the first time I met you.”

Mei had been the last of her kind, and Erik had looked as if his whole world had been salted and burned - the landscape irrevocably scorched.

“Once,” Erik grits out. “I was more afraid than most.”

 

&&

 

Kilgrave struggles onto his elbows when he hears the clatter of footsteps approaching. Their voices leapfrog, carry through the open mike and filter into his room.

“You’re certain there’s no empathic ability?” asks a man.

“Trust me, he has no idea what his victims are feeling,” Jessica replies, savagely. She slips into sight with the man fast on her heels. “He’s a psychopath. People are just things – toys - break one and he gets a replacement fast.”

“Not like Charles at all,” the fellow demurs, frowning as if something doesn’t compute. “Telepathy or empathy is normally the first gift – compulsion, if it comes at all – doesn’t arrive until later. It’s harder to master.”

“So?”

“So?” the man parrots. “Nothing. It’s interesting he blazed past the building blocks though.”

_Filthy, disgusting, feral creatures,_ his mother rants on film in the background. _I remember the sixties._

Kilgrave isn’t certain he likes this. In fact, the man’s very presence is a bother. He was hoping to have time alone with Jessica – to talk – not have her attention diverted by another competitor with Hollywood looks. Exasperated, he calls out: “Jessica, really? Is there something wrong with tall and lanky?”

Voice low, Jessica warns. “He’s fixated on me, and he has no compassion.”

Kilgrave might have argued if the stranger hadn’t stalked right up to the window to boldly stare at him - and by god that was an ugly eyesore. Kilgrave crosses his ankles. “Gorgeous hat,” he says, piously.

 

&&

 

He doesn’t look anything like Charles. The eyes are deep brown, the body long, the mental ability apparently close but nowhere near as potent as Charles’ gift. In physical appearance Kilgrave must be at least five years older than Erik. In actuality, the age gap is vast. The Nazi tattoo on Erik’s wrist has all but faded, the serial string of numbers obscure - while the memory of the Holocaust, the Blitzkrieg rages. His accent is similar, but not as plum, he has the same fall of dark hair, the same ripe lips, but he doesn’t have the moral rigidity that saw Charles dead. Erik presses both hands flat against the glass. Hungry, he leans in.

The holding cell is not a plastic bubble. The room is soundproof, hermetically sealed, but it doesn’t keep _Erik_ out: he feels the steel pylons in the concrete below, traces his mind over the metal framework of the viewing window. He senses the bunk with its sagging springs, the age of its construction almost as old as Erik. He can touch – impact – everything residing inside.

He’d such dreams once: of the way he and Charles would change the world –

Such wonderful dreams –

The world despised mutants – especially telepaths; they were a security nightmare. But it was even worse knowing someone could lift up the skirt of your skin and bones, see the inside of your skull with incisiveness and turn away in _disgust_.

( _I never was_ , Charles had denied).

But he and Charles never _had_ – not when they were whole - and later there were too many hurts, permanent injuries; they were too wounded by one another and so never _could._ (Bitterly, Erik had thought: _I couldn’t tell. I’m not a mind reader_ ).

He had played chess with Charles, schooled the students, he had watched the lines of Charles’ short body, the curve of his ass in woollen slacks. Charles had smiled so often; and Erik had wanted terribly. Such erotic dreams, but it was the 1960s when they met, the McCarthy witch-hunts barely ended – the pinkos, socialists, the homos exonerated on paper, the stigma socially raw. Erik didn’t have the luxury to indulge, intent on hunting Schmidt. If he could have his time again, he had thought wistfully as an old man, he would have found a way to bend Charles, to compromise in the middle. Together they could have changed the world. Now, mental abilities of any persuasion were so exceedingly rare.

“Why have I never heard of him?” Erik wonders.

 

&&

 

Tension edges Jessica’s reply. “He’s a bottom-feeder.”

“Oi!” Kilgrave yells, outraged: “I’m sitting right here!”

“No home. He sleeps couch to couch, travels the world.” King-sized bed to king-sized bed – Paris to Hanoi - but Jessica’s memory shies away from those days. _Tell me the truth_ , he had said loudly in the Chinese restaurant the night they first met. _Do you have any STDs?_ A knife clattered as a couple beside them turned their heads. _I don’t know,_ she’d replied honestly. She’d never been tested. Kilgrave had frowned, played with the napkin in front of him. _When was the last time you had sex?_

_A week ago,_ Jessica had announced. It had been fun, easy. Their waiter, on alert for any order, didn’t quite know where to look. Jessica’s hands had clamped, the table groaning under pressure. He saw it and sighed, _Don’t look so gloomy_ – she bloomed, her smile radiant – _It’s an easy fix, a trip to the chemist, some condoms…._

“He pays for none of it,” Jessica said. “People like Hope are the ones who pay, who go to prison…forced to live with the consequences.” Hope who had an abortion because she wanted no part of what was growing inside of her – track and field, aspirations for the Olympics - Hope had no time for boyfriends until Kilgrave chanced upon her.

_Tell me the truth, when was the last time you had sex?_

_Tell me the truth._

Truth was, he took everything. Kilgrave picked bones clean. “As far as we can tell, the compulsion lasts for about ten hours and the holding cell works.”

Jessica watches as Erik raises his hand – with the gesture the helmet elevates off his head - spins in lazy suspension before lowering to his upheld palm. In the opposite room, Kilgrave boggles. Aloud, he applauds: “So you’re a mutant?! What, no tail between the legs? Or a fine pelt to keep you warm at night? Did you know eighty per cent of your population can’t ‘pass’ as human? Are you one of the lucky ones, then?”

“Are you making fun?” Erik looks engaged; his mouth tics upward. “You’re exceedingly calm for a man sitting in two inches of water wired to an electrical system.”

Solemnly, Kilgrave says: “I never laugh at a man with a condom on his head.”

“Well, safety first,” Erik agrees. He glances at the first locked door and sets the wheel to spinning.

Kilgrave cranes his neck, looking mildly surprised. Jessica watches them both tensely, no one but her had entered the cell yet, she wouldn’t dare risk another’s welfare, conscious Kilgrave could dispatch the intruder with a word. Jessica shifts on her toes, uneasily, and listens as Kilgrave asks Erik aloud: “Can you do that with everything?” The helmet, floating mid-air, bobs through the first door. It waits ponderously in the antechamber for the door to reseal, then drifts forward when the second lock unwinds.

Erik’s power is a little alarming, frankly; the hair on Jessica’s nape stands on end. “Just metal,” Erik answers, distracted.

He has one arm raised, as if to steady the passage of the helmet. The metal door slams shut as it enters the same room as Kilgrave.

Kilgrave gets to his feet. Jessica’s half expecting the object to tumble ass-over-end now the room is hermetically re-sealed, her own faulty logic at work, a belief that what could keep Kilgrave locked _in_ would keep Erik’s ability locked _out_.

The helmet dips erratically but keeps chugging forward. Erik’s teeth are bared.

 

&&

 

With alacrity, Kilgrave takes three steps back and – _well_   _fuck,_ he thinks - because this wasn’t meant to be a threesome. “I only deal with Jessica,” he says, sharply.

The man’s maintained control of his powers despite the safety features of the room. He’s standing rigid on the opposite side of the glass, stance wide. The helmet dips in invitation. “Would you like to try it?” he grates.

“We-elll, no. Really. I’d hate for it to flatten my hair.” Kilgrave cuts a glance at Jessica. “What are you intending?”

“Other than Hope’s release, nothing.”

On the back wall of cell, the damnable tape re-loops to the start, the hitching cries of a child with a shaven skull and electrodes glued to his forehead flickering in BETA quality. The mutant’s expression changes, more tellingly, the helmet drops almost two feet in height. He’s handsome, Kilgrave supposes, if you’re into that sort of thing but he looks pole-axed at the experiments replaying. A button exists here – something about Kilgrave’s childhood resonates with him – a big ol’ red button. Kilgrave’s inclined to push.

“What’s your real name?” the stranger asks. The helmet recovers, raises itself in height.

“What’s yours?” Kilgrave retorts. He’s named after a promise he made to himself - he would kill his parents, their graves would lie in shallow earth - admittedly it’s a little cheesy but he was ten at the time so excuses can be made.

“Kevin,” Jessica answers Erik. “He’s named _Kev_.”

Kilgrave sends a withering look in her direction because he hates the abbreviation. “Jessica’s delusional,” he tries, because what the heck, one more song and dance can’t hurt. “She’s had me locked up in here for hours. You have to help. She thinks I have gifts but I don’t.”

The stranger smiles, cold and predatory. “That’s a pity. Humans don’t interest me much.” Kilgrave blinks, his argument aborted. “And you won’t have powers soon.” The stranger waves his hand and the helmet drops, heavy on Kilgrave’s head. “You may call me Erik.”

Startled, Kilgrave holds absolutely still. It doesn’t hurt. He doesn’t feel anything except the ungainly weight of it, until the metal changes, contracting, becoming smaller. The ends of the face-plate curve under his chin, so when he tries to swipe the helmet off it stays fixed, digging in to his jaw-line.

“It was designed to keep telepaths out; to keep my mind free from foreign suggestion. With that thought in mind, if a mutant gifted with say - mental persuasion - were to wear it I imagine it would keep his powers in.” The mutant – Erik - reopens the first door with a twitch of his finger and closes it behind him, before commanding the second set of doors and stepping into the same room as Kilgrave. “It was designed to protect me from another English gentleman, more powerful than you.”

Kilgrave squares off, gathering himself as Erik approaches. He doesn’t feel any different (albeit, a little ridiculous, it clashes terribly with his suit), but if Erik’s accessory is a dud then he’s going to rue stepping into the same room as Kilgrave. The ability to control metal must be heady. Terribly helpful if he could harness it. Jessica could be subdued if Kilgrave could harness it – Erik could hold her strength at bay - it would give him time to figure out why she’s immune, how to change it back.

He wouldn’t have to play this game of charades where _I promise not to control you_ is the equivalent of _Why the hell can’t I control you!_ Where he gets thrown bodily into a wall and has to pretend not to retaliate because he’s afraid of having his powers filmed, or some swaddle, like that ever stopped Kilgrave using coercion before. It’s the work of two seconds to tell someone to wipe the evidence clean at a later date, to destroy the digital recording, and no jury in the world is going to overturn Hope’s trial based on a defence of ‘mind control.’

Jeri Hogarth will be laughed out of court. Her career ended in filthy tatters.

He doesn’t give a crap about being recorded, he always finds a way to erase it, but he has quite a lot invested in making sure Jessica doesn’t know she’s free of his influence.

Kilgrave weighs his choices, then lets the charade drop. Having Erik means holding Jessica. He ignores the strange helmet and concentrates on the man: “Kneel.”

Erik’s smile only sharpens.

Water sloshes at his feet as he continues his steady approach. “I think you’ve gotten everything you ever wanted in life, _whenever_ you wanted it. I think you’ve never bowed your head to anyone. I could use a person with your skill-set – except Jessica’s right – you don’t care a whit about mutants. Beside yourself, that is. If I let you out this door, if I asked you to join my cause – you’d slip away like an eel.”

Peeved, Kilgrave says sharply: “I’m not a mutant.”

Sometimes he dreams of a bed with folded hospital corners, the chemical smell of disinfectant sharp in the back of his nose. Cries sound up and down the corridor at night but he never meets the other children. Kevin covers his ears, feels the sharp prickle of his shaved hair against his palms. He doesn’t care if they’re hurting – it means for one night his dad isn’t shoving a needle into _his_ spine, the base of his brain – but he doesn’t want to hear the others. He blocks them out. They don’t exist. He builds walls as tall as Edinburgh castle. He thinks scoldingly, _why do they have to be_ _so soddin’ loud?_ and picks at the thread of his hospital scrubs in irritation. Kevin’s been in the research facility since he was two. His mother’s lips are dry when she kisses his forehead. _You’re too_ _sick to go out into the world_ , are her nightly rituals, later she will add: _You’re a virus, Kevin._

Dreams don’t match reality.

By the time he was a virus he was ten years old, not seven. Kevin walked out of the facility on his own two feet and forced his parents to drive. But he likes the descriptive – virus - it’s sensible, given how he takes people over from the inside, infects their will, turns their bodies against themselves. Virus is a step up compared to those – _filthy, disgusting animals; did you see what they did in Cuba, Albert? –_

_You won’t admit it, but you **know** he’s one of them_.

_No. He’s infected_ , she whispers off-screen, the image flickers on the wall. _Infected, Albert_.

Kilgrave hasn’t gotten everything he wanted in life - the evidence is playing in the background - this goddamn endless tape – Jessica’s standing on the opposite side of the glass, rejecting him, but Erik’s right about the rest. He doesn’t care about people, mutants least of all. Jessica was the first - a tiny wedge in his black soul - but there’s no room for more. Crusades. Do-gooding. Blah-fucking-blah to all of it.

“I know my kind,” Erik returns. The expression on his face is eerie, sickly familiar. Erik looks transfixed, desperately intrigued; Kilgrave wore the same expression the night he met Jessica.

“Stop!” Kilgrave orders. He’s never had to fight, no point when talking was more effective but he tries it now, fear metallic on his tongue, and he hates this rising unease. “Stop right there.”

“I don’t think you grew up,” Erik mocks. “Never had to. Mommy and Daddy would do it for you, whatever you wanted, or a reasonable surrogate. So you stayed the same.”

The water telegraphs Kilgrave’s intended punch as he leans into his toes, concentric ripples surfacing and spreading outward. His hands ball into fists. Earlier, he could stand still for Jessica’s punishment and not react to the pain, but he’s not staying still for a ( _filthy, disgusting_ ) mutant.

Erik flicks his finger down, and with it, the helmet goes. Wrenched off balance, Kilgrave doesn’t have time for a single shout before he’s face-planted on the concrete, the helmet weighted as if nailed to the ground. Water rushes in through the face-plate; it covers his ears, blocks out sound. It dampens every stitch of clothing. Submerged in two inches of freezing liquid, Kilgrave is going to drown like a baby in a bathtub.

He thrashes. Kicks out with his feet. He plants both palms against the floor and strains his chest upward, trying to raise his head above water. All he succeeds in doing is wasting what little air he has left.

Lungs screaming, he gets his knees under him and heaves. Seconds tick by, turn into minutes. A hard yank on his shirt collar pulls him upward, spluttering and coughing, foul water running from his nose and mouth. The first breath of recycled air hurts.

Erik lets his shirt go and stands clear.

Kilgrave coughs, hacks up another thin stream, and scrambles to put distance between them. It seems rather prudent. Narrow-eyed, he fetches up against the glass window. Erik drops his bag on the metal bunk, testing the springs, and says casually over his shoulder, “Strip.”

Kilgrave jerks his gaze away, turns an accusing stare on Jessica.

“There is no hope for sweet Hope if you let me drown in a bloody puddle!” Kilgrave spits. The helmet knocks against the glass. “Call your dog off, Jessica, you’re not going to kill me, and I won’t deal with anyone else.”

On the opposite side of the glass, Jessica raises the half empty whiskey bottle.

She drinks with her head tipped back, with her pale throat working smoothly – Kilgrave’s distracted by the memory of ungodly suction, cock buried to the hilt in her pliant mouth. Doing whatever he wanted, the hours they would while away, and how Jessica would moan around his length - in pleasure - she was so intoxicatingly glorious. Kilgrave never left a mark on her. They were good, a perfect team. Jessica was custom-built for him.

She finishes the bottle and swipes the back of her hand over her mouth, forever uncouth, dressed in black. Like Kilgrave, her feet are bare; the hem of her jeans remains damp from their first prison-cell ‘argument’. The look she sends Erik is indecipherable. “You heard him. Take them off.”

His expression freezes because a thousand times no. “There are better places to see me naked. I prefer champagne, king sized mattresses –“ He takes a moment to consider his options, before elaborating. “A lack of audience is always appreciated.”

Erik stirs.

Kilgrave expects the wrench this time. The helmet jerks down so brutally he fears his neck will snap. The fall isn’t as far, he’s already sitting, but the water rushes through the face-plate just the same.

Previously strained, his lungs don’t last half the time.

The slosh of percussion waves alerts him to Erik’s movement, before his shirt is torn in two. The leather belt around his waist is removed at leisure, as if Erik’s in no hurry, by the time his slacks and underwear are torn off Kilgrave’s gone lax with oxygen deprivation.

_“Just breathe, little girl,_ ” his mother whispers, the audio stuttering in his eardrums. Released, Kilgrave flops onto his back, clear of the water once more.

It feels like a whale is sitting on his chest, or a cartoon anvil. He doesn’t bother sitting up, just blinks at the ceiling. On the back wall, a different child howls, thrashing as the doctors (his parents) hold her fast.

Erik picks up the soggy clothing, torn to ribbons, and leaves the room. He leaves Kilgrave’s belt behind, floating nearby, a leather eel flexing in the water.

“What was your plan?” Erik asks bluntly, the second he’s out the door.

Jessica glances at Kilgrave suspiciously then steps away from the mike.

 

&&

 

“Simple: physically beat Kilgrave until he had to defend himself; record it on tape, then present the evidence to Hogarth, prove to the courts once and for all Hope wasn’t acting of her own volition.”

“And how’d that work out for you?”

Kilgrave’s bruised all over, in shades of violet and mottled black, her handiwork on his exposed skin.

“Not well,” she admits, and kicks out with a heel. “Kilgrave stayed conscious and alert through a double organ transplant for fuck’s sake – trying to put his head through a wall doesn’t really compete.” Except it made her feel better, knocking his tooth loose, even if he had only wheezed out a laugh. She rubs a thumb over her bottom lip and admits softly. “The courts won’t believe us anyway…Kilgrave’s right about that.”

Erik looks at her shrewdly: “So what was your second plan?”

“Frog march him down to the court and have him overturn their decision, make him use his compulsion to set Hope free.” She grimaces when Erik raises an eyebrow. “It’s a crapshoot – he’s bartering on me staying with him. If I promise to stay he’ll let Hope go. I’m hoping the dice rolls in the other direction - he lets Hope go – then afterward I find a way to kill him.”

“He’s a mutant.” In the side-room, where a miniature kitchenette is set up, all the spoons and forks rattle in agitation.

Jessica doesn’t blink. “According to his own parent’s he’s a virus.”

“The same parents who are experimenting on him in the video? Humans call their mutant offspring monsters. If they’re religious fanatics they call them demons. Scientists calling their son a virus is the same desperate denial I’ve heard before.” Erik’s eyes blaze. “It doesn’t alter the fact he’s one of mine.”

“The hermetically sealed room – “

“Is soundproof. Kilgrave’s power lies in his natural speaking voice. No sound passes between this room and that one, only via the microphone, and technology changes both the pitch and tenor of a human voice. Congratulations, Jessica, you have the perfect prison for Kilgrave and an insolvable problem. You can’t transport him to the courts, or have him use compulsion to free Hope, without allowing him to actually _speak._ Outside of this cage – away from the black site - you lose all control of him. Is that why I’m here? To find a way around it?”

“He’s a killer and a serial rapist. You’re here to make sure Kilgrave’s last victim doesn’t have her entire life ruined because of him. After court, I’m there to end it.”

It’s been a year since Mei Jong died. Erik travels with a single black bag over his shoulder, the contents of which are a Nazi commando knife, a Glock, and a change of clothing… plus four iron cuffs, two inches wide, padded on the inside. The last item is harder to explain – a brutal gag with harness attached - the plug short and stumpy. It’s not designed to set off a person’s gag-reflex (it rests a mere inch inside the mouth) but it’s heavy and fat, prying the mouth open and pinning the tongue down. In the last year, Erik’s had occasion to use it.

He’s far exceeded Schmidt for creativity.

For Charles, the absence of him, Erik’s hurt people until their hearts gave out.

He thought he was succeeding, gathering potential names, finding those responsible, but after the mess in Stranraer –

Seventy-three per cent of all intelligence gathered under duress is proven ineffective, false, or an outright lie. After Stranraer, Erik was no closer to finding the culprits than he originally was, but his physical description was posted to every BOLO, international alert, and police agency in the world, his face instantly recognisable. In the aftermath of the balls-up he barely got out of Scotland. “Let me make a different wager. I convince Kilgrave to use his compulsion to free Hope – I find a way to transport him from A to B, speak, without it ending in disaster - and afterward you give him to me.”

 

&&

 

“You and Hogarth are like peas in a fucking pod! Get it through your thick skull! You can’t _use_ him!” A part of Jessica, calculating, removed, asks ‘but isn’t that what she’s doing?’ Exploiting Kilgrave’s gift? Finding a way to use it? Ruthlessly, she shuts the voice down because it’s not the same, nowhere near. It’s not about personal vengeance or profit, it’s not about winning every trial, getting divorce papers signed in a time schedule that suits you and before an ex has the opportunity to work through her grief, her natural confusion. It’s about _Hope._ It’s about undoing something Kilgrave set in motion.

Jessica won’t sleep easy until she knows for certain he’s buried, until Trish, Malcolm, and Luke are safe, those other people, the small incidental meetings that touched upon her life, who paid for it with Kilgrave’s jealousy. She wants him to pay for their deaths, too. Using him isn’t a consideration for Jessica – it’s not even a blip on her conscience – if Kilgrave frees Hope, then Jessica will cut out his tongue. His so-called ‘gift’, the potential benefits, can go to hell.

Erik’s face goes to marble. He changes the topic. “When do you want Hope free?”

“Tomorrow. Yesterday.” Disgruntled, Jessica makes her way to the kitchen. She bins the empty bottle then sticks her head in the fridge. Trish left a cheese and pickle sandwich, a can of coke, behind. She peels the two slices of bread apart, flings the pickles in the sink, and tears the remaining cheese and bread into bite-size chunks. “The D.A are offering her a deal: if she admits to a psychotic break, they’ll drop the charges to fifteen years. Hope will be out of the system by thirty-four. She has twenty-four hours to sign or the D.A takes the deal off the table. Hogarth’s legal counsel is to cop to it.” She waves the fragmented sandwich to indicate the black site, the cell in the other room, the prisoner in his soundproof cage. “In case all of this doesn’t pan out…at least that way Hope doesn’t serve life in prison.”

Indifferent, Erik shrugs: “Have her sign.”

Incredulous, Jessica swallows: “No. I won’t have Hope say she killed her parents. Not aloud.”

“It’s a lie. Admitting it means nothing.”

Bitter, she retorts: “Lies have a way of hooking into the skin.”

At an impasse, they consider one another. The food sits heavy in Jessica’s stomach, at odds with her liquid diet. “There’s crappy coffee if you want some,” she says eventually. He takes the coke from the fridge without stirring, propped against the kitchen doorjamb. Erik’s abilities are much a part of him as breathing – or talking – he uses them as if he has every right to demonstrate. It makes her thirsty, inexplicably thirsty.

“I can break him in twenty-four hours,” Erik declares. He taps the aluminium top then pops the soda-can open. “But I need a friend on site.”

“What kind of friend?”

“An exceptionally gifted one.”

Mutant talents manifest in adolescence, or barring hormonal changes, are brought on by sickness or extreme trauma. Jessica was fifteen when the car rolled, fifteen and a half when she awoke from the coma, excessively strong. “Am I one of you?” she asks, because Erik came when she called.

“No,” he intones, and turns away from her. “Speak to Steve Rogers…or investigate the Soldier program. They’ve been trying to duplicate the serum since the nineteen-forties. Cheap knock-offs for a paranoid government…” He lifts his chin, his smile thin as a razor blade. ”The military had a little more zeal after they met me at the Bay of Pigs.”

“Okay,” Jessica says, then mutters sourly. “I need another drink.”

 

&&

 

It’s a blustery day when he ventures out of the house. His parents are rigid on the couch, watching Arsenal and Tottenham. Kevin hesitates at the door, the clouds scudding overhead, the park opposite brimming with kids. It’s silly how even the cottage feels huge.

When Kevin told his parents to drive, after he walked out of the facility, he didn’t have a particular image in mind. Home was a four-by-four ward, a television in the corner, people whimpering at night. He supposed this was his home. It was his parent’s home, at least, so it _must_ be his. He told them to sit, to watch telly, he told them not to move until he came back. On the first night as he opened every cupboard and drawer, he listened to the squeak of the vinyl floorboards under his feet.  He trailed a hand over cheery curtains, over doctorate degrees nailed to the walls. The door to the first bedroom was hard to push open, as if the hinges were stuck. His room was painted blue, a baby’s cot at centre stage. It wouldn’t do. Obviously, his parents weren’t expecting him back.

They hadn’t altered a single thing in ten years.

Sprawled, Kevin slept in the master bedroom, lying atop the covers.

It takes him two days to step outside, into the vast _wideness_ , and not feel seasick. Uncertainty, exhilaration, edges him out. His parents do whatever he wants whenever he wants – hop on one foot, he sniggers – and they look ridiculous with their arms flapping to gain more height, with their faces a hectic red. They make food he’s never tasted before, the strict diet of the facility forgotten. He steps outside because it’s silly being scared when his parents watch telly until their eyes water, when they do what they’re told. He steps outside because he isn’t certain if it’s only them and Kevin needs to know.

He finds a park where children run, screaming at a different pitch to what he’s accustomed. They tear about the playground like monkeys. Older kids play footy, kicking the ball back and forth. Kevin circumnavigates the playground, watching their interactions surreptitiously. A girl lies alone on her belly in the grass, there’s a colouring book in front of her, an assortment of pencils. When Kevin approaches, he sees a garden running wild, ladybugs crawling across the page, Emperor butterflies in mid-flight. She cranes her neck upward when his shadow darkens the page.

He’s anxious – about his buzz-cut, the puncture wounds on his nape, the way his ears stick out: “I want you to like me,” he says aggressively, in a rush.

“Okay,” she agrees. “I’m Kaitlyn.” She studies the pencils intently, tongue pressed between her lips, then selects the colour purple. She waves it at him hopefully. “You can use this.” Artless, she shuffles aside to make room.

This is what friendship is, Kevin supposes.

When the ball from the footy game careens into Kevin’s side, he snaps his head around and shouts: “Hey! Watch yourself!”

Kaitlyn’s brother picks the ball up, face blank. He trots across the grass, runs across the busy road dodging cars and stops in front of the Fish ‘n Chip shop. In the reflection, he stares at himself until the light falls.

 

&&

 

Sometimes when Kilgrave dreams, he doesn’t make it out of the facility. His mother jerks him back, one side of her face melted wax.

Sometimes he does. He sneaks down a long corridor with his hands clamped over his ears, the better to block the screams of the other children. He doesn’t peer into their windows. He doesn’t want to know what they look like. _They don’t exist_. _They_ don’t matter.

Sometimes, in her nightly rituals, his mother says _I’m going to make a virus_ instead of _you are a virus_. But that’s dreams for you, always muddling the order.

 

&&

 

Kilgrave blinks. The videotape has looped again, some damnable child screams, the temperature in his holding cell plummets. His skin has pebbled with goose bumps, his cock a miniature nub between his thighs.

“What do you think this will accomplish, oi? What do you think you’ll gain? Proof of my ability? You want to show a video recording at Hope’s trial?” Furious, he yells: “It won’t work with the helmet on, you twat!” Called out by the noise, Jessica and Erik return. Kilgrave’s not ashamed of his body – Jessica’s seen everything before - but it takes effort not to twist away from the other man’s dragging gaze.

“Something wrong, slim Jim?” Jessica taunts.

Kilgrave grits his teeth. “Erik, why don’t you come inside again, take the helmet off, I’ll give you a demonstration. I promise, you won’t forget it. Unless you’re afraid?” He cuts his chin forward; to Jessica, he sneers: “You think he’s better, _stronger_ , than me?” His pride is stung because Jessica was the one who got away, the only one Kilgrave wanted to keep. It’s a game of one-upmanship, mostly; he’s livid there’s an uninvited player sitting at his table. Caged, shocked, _beaten_ , displayed, defiantly he says: “I’ve never hurt you, not like this, Jessica.”

“You’ve hurt me exactly like this!” Jessica shouts. His jaw works but Kilgrave bites down on the retaliation, forces his eyes away from her. “No? You don’t want to engage? Funny, because that’s exactly how I feel. I’ve already given you enough attention to last a lifetime, you don’t get more.”

“Jessica,” he warns. “Jessica!” he yells, when Erik takes up the invitation and re-enters the cell. He’s beyond petulance, moved into rage because the helmet _works_ , it could keep him like this, impotent and contained, indefinitely. _Erik_ can keep him like this. The bubbling rush of anxiety is fear – no, outright terror – because the idea of being leashed so thoroughly is hell. “If you believe Jessica's demented story – if you _really_ believe her – then you ought to run.”

“I’ve had a few encounters with mental abilities before,” Erik rebuts. He glances at the tripod set up on the opposite side of the window and shrugs. “The tape recording is not for court – at least not any more – because you are right, a jury won’t accept it, they’ll declare it staged. The camera is for me. So I can make you re-watch what’s going to happen to you in the next twenty-four hours.”

This isn’t right, Kilgrave thinks, bewildered. There’s something terribly not right.

“If you don’t want my confession what do you want?”

“I want you to walk down to the Supreme Court tomorrow and ‘convince’ the judges, lawyers, whoever else you need to that Hope Schlottman is innocent.”

It startles a laugh out of Kilgrave. “Anything else?”

“I want her release expedited.”

“Certainly,” Kilgrave replies. “I release the girl, you take the pimple-hat off me beforehand, everybody leaves and our paths won’t cross again.”

“Yes, you would agree so easily." Erik smiles.  "Pity I can’t suspend the disbelief.”

“Not at _this_ moment.” _Not until I tell you to_.  Astute, Erik has no difficulty deciphering the implication. The back of the helmet slams against the window, hard enough to rattle Kilgrave’s teeth. He can’t turn his head side to side, only stare ahead as a….a... “Oh, you poxy son of a bitch!” Kilgrave rants, when he sees the gag; he’ll take duct tape over that monstrosity.

“Sorry, I need my helmet,” Erik explains, sounding anything but apologetic.

The blocky stump of the gag looks bitten, as if its been used before. The leather harness is creased, there are indents on the buckle strap, and trust a bloody German to be a sadist. The end of the gag – the part that protrudes from the mouth – is capped by aluminium. Kilgrave turns his head away when it taps his lips demandingly, the leather straps dangling like an octopus with an unfortunate amputation. He stares at a spot on the far wall. He replays Jessica’s face over in his mind, the daily photos she sent at ten o clock sharp, her atrocious wardrobe and her defiant eyes, he remembers the colours he had dressed her in – cheery yellow, seductive blue, siren red – the first night he slept with Jessica her pupils were blown wide, her pulse tripping under his fingertips. Her skin had flushed with her heart rate, nipples gone erect, and it was so easy to mistake the signs for arousal. Kilgrave let his hand slip from her throat, over the roundness of her firm breasts, across a flat stomach and had stopped in distaste when he found the hair between her legs: “Wax this off next time. Get rid of it.”

He’s not a mind reader, but sometimes the eyes - the windows to the soul and all that blather - paint a picture. Sometimes with puppets he’ll get a glimmer, a sense of black despair. In Jessica’s case it was rage, an inner strength that matched her unlikely body.

She jerked when he slipped a finger between her folds, when he found the typical moist heat of a cunt but no wetness. Kilgrave wasn’t a monster. He didn’t want blood on his dick any more than Jessica wanted vaginal tearing. “You desire me,” he had whispered, and propped his chin on her hipbone until slickness dampened his fingertips, until she arched into his hand. “I’m going to make you unravel.” He did. “Come with me, Jessica,” he said all over Europe.

“Come for me, Jessica,” he said at night.

Erik’s not really here. Like the other children his parent’s experimented on - Erik’s just a _thing_ , an irritation; Kilgrave’s talented at blocking people out. He’s not here, either: reminiscing instead. Florence and the elegant curve of Jessica’s neck, how adult she looked in her designer dresses. He’s not trapped – they’ve already tipped their hand – but waiting, this time tomorrow he’ll be unfettered enough to speak.

He’s focused a little to the left of Erik, mouth pursed to deny the gag entry, but he sees it when Erik bends to pick up the discarded belt, sodden wet, heavy, and swings it with the full length of his arm behind the strike. Too thick to break the skin, it’s like being bludgeoned by a truncheon.

It lands on the left pectoral, angles down over his stomach and flicks around his hipbone. Kilgrave convulses. He staggers, half-drunk as the helmet jerks him off the window. Jessica’s features dissolve. The second blow is delivered straight: it hits his abdomen and wraps around his waist at velocity, striking his lower back. The third comes even as his knees buckle, the invisible support of Erik’s power gone.

Erik takes one deliberate step forward then swings the belt in an overhead arc, like a bowler lining up for a game of afternoon cricket. With Kilgrave on his knees, it impacts against his exposed spine, whacks hard against his buttock, and ends with a lick of fire in the soft flesh of his upper thigh. Kilgrave howls. Brutally, the scream cuts off when the gag batters his lip bloody – until he opens his mouth wide, or risks losing his teeth.

Erik's cursed helmet - finally - slips free, returns to the bunk.

The abrupt silence is broken by the sound of the harness fastening behind his head, metal eyelets to metal buckle; it’s broken by the harsh drag of air into his lungs.

“Breathe through your nose,” Erik commands. He drops the belt and scrubs a hand through Kilgrave’s wet hair, checking the metal and leather straps of the gag-harness. Reassured, Erik squeezes Kilgrave’s neck once. “Concentrate. Relax your throat.”

He can’t concentrate on anything but the obstruction in his mouth: the way his tongue is pinned, how it makes breathing that much harder. Little licks of fire make him twitch; he jerks his neck out from under Erik’s touch, his nape prickling with needles. He thinks venomously _I’m going to make you climb into an acid vat, one limb at a time_. He thinks, more urgently, _this time tomorrow,_ until it’s an affirmation.

On the opposite wall, seven-year-old Kevin wails. Silently, Kilgrave agrees with him. Minutes tick by until eventually he drags his eyes up. Erik’s unbuttoned his shirt cuff, rolled the sleeve to mid-elbow; he’s watching Kilgrave silently.

This time tomorrow.

Eighteen whole seconds Jessica was free, not under Kilgrave’s control, eighteen seconds when she didn’t run, she chose to stay. Kilgrave gave her the option, provided the choice, and she chose him. He remembers saying so to Jessica, how her expression had gone from bewilderment to disbelief to fury. “I was confused,” she bit out. “I didn’t know what was happening.” It was like an alien language, some dialect Kilgrave couldn’t comprehend. Beyond hurt, the look she sent him was the same you’d direct at a sewer slug. “I couldn’t think!”

“Oh bollocks…you wanted it!” I made you come, he didn’t say, you always unravelled in my bed.

Time, as they say, is a matter of perspective. If this is their plan, then Kilgrave can do a lot in eighteen seconds. He’s going to be free for a much longer period tomorrow, to persuade the judge to overturn the charges, to wipe the police file, to harangue the corrections facility into releasing Hope into Jessica’s care. He can endure the night, if it allows him those precious seconds of freedom.

Erik doesn’t seem perturbed. When both sleeves are rolled up, he reopens the bag, rooting around in the contents. “Jessica said you were big on providing options, so I have one for you.” He drops four iron cuffs in the water, two inches wide but with no chain to link them. “Ankles and wrists, one for each. Put them on or I’ll jerk you up by the gag and whip you bloody.” Everything about Erik’s manner is matter-of-fact, a deliberate statement of intent.

Belatedly Kilgrave realises he’s sweating, despite the cold: the first stage of shock.

Designer suits, fine wares, were always his mainstay; it’s unsettling to have his personal preferences ignored, to be presented with bangles to be worn, to be stripped naked. It’s maddening to understand exactly what Erik is doing, and for the knowledge to be bereft of comfort. He stares at the cuffs for a long moment then shrugs the tension from his shoulders. Decided, Kilgrave buckles the ankle cuffs on first - not too tight, keeping the circulation free - then follows with the wrists, fumbling the buckles until they’re latched onto all four limbs – if he has to last till morning, there’s no point in giving Erik an excuse to hurt him more than necessary. The mutant’s already overly keen to show his power off.

“Hold your hands up.”

Kilgrave presents both wrists. Dread ratchets higher as the metal turns to liquid, fusing the clasp into solid steel before hardening again. Unbreakable. Frantic, Kilgrave wonders if the harness on his head has done the same; if he were to reach behind himself would the buckle exist, or could it no longer function as originally designed? The gag tastes sour in his mouth, like bile and old blood. Patterned grooves mar the surface, worn down by previous bite marks, an unheard history.

Erik touches his stretched out jaw. “Gut,” he rumbles. “This night is going to hurt. It’s not going to stop. It won’t feel good for you at any stage.” 

Being struck by a bus, open transplant surgery, Jessica’s physical brutality, Kilgrave has survived all of these things and more. This time tomorrow, he promises, Erik will wish he’d never entered the premises.

The manacles jerk at once, as if pulled on an invisible cable. Arms and ankles stretch wide, wider still, until ‘drawn and quartered’ is a serious concern. He’s in danger of doing the splits, of dislocating his hips, when the pressure stops, spread-eagled like a star on a Christmas tree. The cuffs bite into wrists and ankles, the manacles strain for the opposite walls of the chamber. His vulnerable bits dangle, no pretence of shelter with his thighs stretched so painfully. The invisible cable spins him about, lazily, until he’s facing away from Erik and staring straight at Jessica Jones - on the opposite side of the glass - her presence forgotten when the belt fell.

The reminder that she’s watching feels like a punch to the solar plexus.

His mouth is obscenely wide, legs wider still, and her bruises are mottled all over the canvas of his bare skin, old and new alike. He stares at her – at the Help Me scrawled on the window glass – and shakes. Erik touches the transplant scar, touches between _his_ legs, he runs his hands down Kilgrave’s thighs as if he’s a possession, and then he picks the belt up again.

The tape rolls on.

The first strike feels like a hundred kinds of betrayal because he put the damn cuffs on, Kilgrave did exactly as instructed. The second strike lands a half inch from the first, high on his shoulders, headed down, and he realises over the bloom of fresh heat that Erik plans on lashing him like a pro, from shoulders to toes, one strip at a time. There’s not enough give in his position to wriggle, he can only anticipate, flinch.

Unlike the first three lashes received the blows are not as hard, or bruising to the skin. But it stings like a red devil; it drags him relentlessly from exhaustion to sensation. When it stops, Kilgrave’s body throbs in time to his heartbeat. There’s no distinction of self, as if every layer of skin, nerve ending, has been hot-wired and fused together. He feels _amplified_. The only thing he feels more of is white-hot humiliation. Jessica hasn’t looked away, not once during the lashing.

Kilgrave’s chin is almost resting on his breastbone when it’s done, his shoulders on fire as much from the whipping as the suspension and he can hear the water slosh as Erik approaches.

“Here’s the thing about pain; the body can’t handle it for extended periods of time. It strokes out. The heart gives in. Exposed to it for long enough, your mind starts to look for escape hatches, relief, some way to make it _bearable_. When the ache is constant you hunt for variation in it. Your mind chases random hits of pleasure, to counteract the constant, and when it’s presented, you cling to it like a life raft. Simple, and if you’re in the BDSM scene, some people do it very naturally. They know how to focus on the caress between the strikes - others can be taught, or will learn to stop themselves from going mad.” Erik reaches around and cups Kilgrave’s groin, trails slippery fingers over his cock, longer and distended despite the cold, an unwanted side effect of the rush of blood through his body.

Erik explains everything as he goes, as if it’s a staged scene – a well educated dominant letting a submissive catch his breath – letting him _feel_ it and squirm, letting his mind start to imagine, and to do half the work for Erik.

“It helps if you know biology. For instance, there’s no bone in the male penis despite the vernacular, and while erotic fiction might have a thousand readers believing otherwise, it’s not a muscle either.” A warning sound makes it past the gag, stoppered, but its meaning apparent. “It’s three columns of soft tissue wrapped up in skin, it’s four thousand nerve endings residing in one location, and gaining an erection is as simple as proper blood flow. The faster your heart beats, the more distended you get, add arousal to the mind-set and you have a boner.” Erik touches him. Kilgrave slams his head backward, trying to head-butt the other man.

Neatly, Erik side steps and takes his hand away.

The invisible pulley on the manacles vanishes. Flailing, Kilgrave strikes the concrete in a wet crash.

Water splashes against the window. It ripples and recedes around the room in a travelling wave. Limbs strained, Kilgrave breathes slow, in and out through his nose. He focuses an accusing gaze on Jessica. She won’t let it go too far, he reasons; Jessica wants to be a hero. Regardless of how she feels about him personally, Kilgrave needs to be functioning tomorrow. As humiliating as it is to have her witness – Kilgrave is safe so long as Jessica remains present.

“Ever heard of a humbler?” Erik asks from behind.

It’s harder this time to look away from her. Looking away means facing what’s coming.

Erik overturns the mattress.  Two metal bedsprings peel off and fly into his hand, hinged at one end. In appearance the metal humbler is the width of the bed-frame. With a thought Erik twists both ends together into a plait to the midway point, then leaves the remainder of the two strands separated – the maw open. Kilgrave shakes his head dumbly - to the question, or to the device - he presses against the window, unconsciously, closer to Jessica. Kilgrave can’t read the expression that flickers over Erik’s face, or fathom why it darkens. He can barely keep up with the run-on sentences, the man’s endless inability to _stop talking._

“I recall you ordered me to kneel earlier. I assume it’s a position you like?” Again, Kilgrave shakes his head, he flashes back to a memory of Jessica on her knees, mouth on his cock; his mother’s melted face and how his father had dropped prone to the floor, right there and then: _Dear god, Kevin, we have to go to the hospital! Please!_ He pulls his trembling limbs close, trying to quiet the over-strained muscles. Mockingly, Erik nods: “Very thoughtful.”

The metal on his wrist and ankle cuffs merge, become one, until Kilgrave is sitting in the water with his thighs pressed to his chest, hands and feet locked together.

The mutant knees him in the shoulder, tips him sideways. Uncaring of the seat of his pants, Erik sits beside him in the water, by the rounded curve of Kilgrave’s ass. Hovering alongside Erik, the two halves of the humbler spread open at the halfway point.

“I’m going to pull your scrotum down, out of the way. These two planks of metal are going to close like a hinge, forming a tight ring above the testicles.” Erik demonstrates, fingers nimble; he yanks Kilgrave’s sack until the skin stretches taut, until his balls are as far away from his body as possible, then clamps the metal together around the base and seals the remainder of the humbler shut, his balls trapped on the other side of the steel bar. Kilgrave hollers, legs and arms jerking against the restraints. The water churns uneasily.

Erik strokes a thumb across Kilgrave’s navel, continues in the same implacable voice. “The hurt, at this stage, is more of a pinch. You can’t come like this. Your testicles are stretched too far away from the perineum, from your dick, to be of any use. So the rules are simple: keep your knees to your chest, and the only stretch you feel is the weight of the steel. With your ass in the air, with your legs out of the way, there’s no real pain at all.” Erik pats Kilgrave’s balls, stretched tight as a drum in their velvety skin. The ‘arms’ of the humbler – the width – is the same as the bunk bed. The ends flare out to either side of Kilgrave’s hips.

“But this is the rub,” Erik whispers. “If you lower your legs, that long length of metal squeezing behind your balls - sitting pretty on your perineum - has nowhere to go but _backwards_. Because your thighs, so good at protecting your groin, are in the way when properly lowered. If you kneel upright,” Erik makes a clicking sound with his tongue then shrugs. “Well, most men don’t make it upright because the metal has to sit _behind_ your derriere then – and wherever the humbler goes – so goes your scrotum.” He watches Kilgrave flush a frantic red, staring between his own legs.

“Keep your knees up, Kilgrave.” Erik advises cheerfully, and hoists him upright, suspended mid-air.

He lets the cuffs untangle, arms separating from legs, no longer compacted into a foetal position. Erik only maintains power over the wrist restraints, and with a casual gesture of one hand, jerks Kilgrave’s arms over his head.

Kilgrave’s ankles, criminally, are completely free.

Erik spins him, and lets gravity do the rest.

Lazily, Kilgrave rotates on an invisible breeze. His shoulders are agony. He struggles to hold his own knees high to his chest, out of the way. The weight of the humbler stretches his balls regardless, and he thinks, despairingly, he can’t do this for long. The weight of his own thigh muscles will drag his legs down; they’re already trembling at the position. He spins into Jessica’s range of focus, out again until he’s facing his childhood image, then sways into Erik’s heated gaze.

Over the comm, Jessica speaks for the first time.

“You once told a man to go screw himself - can you imagine - you said. Did he snap his own spine trying to feed his cock into his mouth? Or did he punch a fist into his rectum?” Four fingers, Kilgrave remembers. He was nineteen at the time - walking along the Seine - when a stranger had reached out, alcohol ripe on his breath and said “How much for the night, sweetie?” He had touched Kilgrave on the back of the neck, he had leered, and Kilgrave had stopped dead in his tracks, snapped without thinking, _Oh, go screw yourself._

Kilgrave blinks sweat from his eyes. His hip muscles, the gluteus medius, the bulk of his thighs tremble randomly.

“When your legs give out, when that humbler racks your balls - when you stretch yourself and _keep_ stretching - do you think your scrotum will tear right off? Or do you think you could fuck your own asshole, stuff those balls inside of you, because they’re so loose in their socket? You ever been crammed full with something you _didn’t_ want?”

_Please_ , Kilgrave shudders. _Stop it. Stop him._ Because it’s not meant to go like this, with mutants intervening, himself pinned like a bug, his voice stoppered, Jessica’s quiet musings ringing in his ear. _She’s_ not meant to react like this, where’s her moral outrage?

His legs jerk a fraction lower. In terror, Kilgrave scrambles to pull them up. If he had his voice, he’d beg Erik for the ankle and wrist cuffs to be re-connected, to be folded up like a pretzel. At least that way he wouldn’t have to fight his own body weight.

He swings into Jessica’s line of focus, faces his childhood self, and passes over to Erik. He can’t breathe. The strain in his arms, the gag in his mouth, the rising swell of panic all conspire to make it harder – he’s suffocating, his shoulders will dislocate - his legs will drop of their own accord. Kilgrave struggles, trying to find an escape, to vocalise and have it be heard. He’s starting to feel everything and everything, in this situation, is too much. There’s a weakness in his castle wall – a hairline crack buried beneath the foundations.

“Lower him down,” Jessica says, eventually.

He sobs, can’t hold the noise in. Kilgrave’s bum touches the water and he folds face down, easier to maintain position with his chest curved over his thighs, let body weight work in his favour for once. His fingers are numb, useless; the padded cuffs have rubbed his wrists raw. _Thank you_ , he babbles wordlessly, _I knew you wouldn’t._

Erik’s voice is stony. “What is it?”

“Company,” Jessica replies, without inflection.

Erik straightens. He wades toward the bunk and picks up his helmet, before letting himself out of the room with a clang. In the silence, Kilgrave turns his head, enough to see them huddle together, safe on the opposite side of the glass. Eyes heavy, Kilgrave watches as they walk toward the staircase, out of his line of sight. His balls, still clamped in the humbler, send out a constant bark of pain. Kilgrave folds his forearms under his head - to keep his face out of the water - and tries to find some measure of rest. This time tomorrow – he slurs, but it feels shaky, not so much an affirmation but a fervent wish.

On the back wall, the videotape flickers, restarts, re-loops, plays over. _I remember the sixties,_ his mother says. _We couldn’t stop them – filthy, disgusting, animals. We need to find a way to stop them, Albert._

When Kilgrave was ten – his parents ran away from home – and he thinks that’s kind of hilarious.  When he was fourteen, black ops crashed through the window of his penthouse – he hollered _stop!_ before they could fire – paranoid, he reasoned - “Did my parents send you?” Kevin didn’t know what he wanted the answer to be. The soldier, hidden behind a black ski mask, said no. Startled, Kevin rocked on his heels. He checked the exit points, told the soldier to cut his eyes out with his own knife, then chose a direction and kept walking. He took out another five team members on the way. He’d been reckless, drawn the unwanted attention of someone.

After that, he was careful. Still is.

He hunts and erases all evidence of himself – anxious, he dreams of the facility most every night – Kevin won’t go back. Instead, he ‘passes’. He wears slacks, purple shirts, CCTV footage and hotel security cameras lose vast chunks of recorded data when he’s around. He won’t be found: he’s not some megalomaniac like the costumed fools saving New York. In plain sight, Kevin hides among the sea of endless crowds. When the first rumours start to circulate - a Mutant and Enhanced Human registration act to be discussed in Congress - Kilgrave goes under like a submarine.

 

&&

 

Here’s an uncomfortable truth: in Kilgrave’s mind he’s not responsible – (okay, maybe a _smidge_ responsible), but ultimately it’s the puppets interpreting his words who should shoulder the blame; like Jessica was so keen to remind him, he can’t stop people from thinking. However they react, it is often with their first surface thought, their earliest inclination.

Go screw yourself. Take care of it.

The French Nancy who stopped him on the Seine could have had his hair curled, screwed into ringlets, he would have looked absolutely dashing. Jessica could have threatened the bitch with the USB flash-drive and _not_ punched her in the chest like a heavyweight. So see? Not Kilgrave’s fault. They can’t blame him for that, they might as well blame Hollywood or television, a thousand repetitive scripts where ‘Take care of it’ or ‘Go screw yourself’ has only one implication.

It’s not his problem they fail to think outside of the box – and Kilgrave won’t spend the rest of his life ending each sentence in a question – it’s tiring.

 

&&

 

Here’s an uncomfortable truth. Despite being under Kilgrave’s thumb for almost two years Jessica prefers rough sex. She slams around the apartment with Luke, bangs against the walls, they grind against the bed and make noise until the upstairs neighbour hollers like a harpy, until Robyn thumps the floorboards in agitation.

Here’s another truth, despite being repeatedly raped for two years Jessica enjoys sex. She likes the give and take, the physicality, how she has to work for her orgasm; Jessica likes the sweat and the smell. It staves off the bitterness of coming with an off-hand remark – an afterthought.

Here’s a truth with no compromise – none of that undermines what Kilgrave did - or lessens the criminality of his acts. Only a shit would believe otherwise.

_It wasn’t all bad,_ Kilgrave had argued. _What was so terrible about seeing the world?_

In Florence they pushed through the crowded Loggia dei Lanzi - where the tourists gather under a cacophony of mixed languages, where the locals sell their wares. It’s usually hot, a midday bake. Old men in shaded hats loiter near the fountain. They hold long sticks with magnets, snatching coins out of the wishing well surreptitiously, as fast as the tourists can fling them.

“Would you look at that!” Kilgrave had crowed. He’d walked around and around the base, neck craned upward in appreciation. Kilgrave could be boyishly enthusiastic at times – almost charming – mostly, Jessica remembers how petulant he was. Benvenuto Cellini’s artwork was cast in bronze, Perseus standing atop the body of a slain woman, poised on one leg – her severed head held aloft triumphantly. In the Ovid’s’ version of Greek mythology Medusa was a beautiful woman, desired by many until raped by Poseidon in Athena’s temple.

Her sacred ground despoiled, Athena cursed the woman - her hair became a nest of hideous snakes, and should men meet her gaze, Medusa’s eyes could turn them to instant stone. So satisfied, Athena cast her out of the temple for the shame Medusa had wrought.

In Loggia dei Lanzi, 'Perseus with the head of Medusa' is the only bronze statue; it stands surrounded by works depicting David, Hercules and Neptune. Appropriately, the men are carved from marble. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” Kilgrave had grinned. “Four hundred and seventeen years old, yet still standing.” Clutched in Perseus’ hand, Medusa’s tresses looked as much like braids as coiled snakes, his foot planted heavily in the centre of her chest.

In Ovid’s version, no one gave a shit about the original victim.

Bitterly, Jessica had wondered where all the female gods had gone. When she read the editorials about Hope’s slain parents - the terrible double homicide - how monstrous Hope was, the sheer evil of her pre-meditated plan, Jessica remembered bronze, the rush of blood flowing from a statue’s severed neck.


	2. Chapter 2

“What was that?” Jessica growls. She’s at odds – unhappy - her voice staccato sharp as Erik exits the cell and joins her. Moths batter against the overhead light; the small refrigerator hums as its motor kicks into overdrive. Outside, the New York streets sound calm.

“You wanted Kilgrave to assist tomorrow; he’s braced, expecting pain.  He wasn’t expecting that.”

“Yeah? Neither was I.” Jessica looks away from Kilgrave, hunched on his knees with his forehead kissing the water. She jerks her jacket on. Jessica shoves both feet into her boots, tying the shoelaces off haphazardly.

Inexplicably, she misses Trish.

Kilgrave had encouraged communication when Jessica was with him – postcards, emails, short phone calls – long enough to touch base, to nullify concerns for Jessica’s well-being but short enough to alienate her chosen sister. Post-Kilgrave, it was Jessica who broke off all contact, isolated herself, began a serious relationship with a hard bottle. It was better that way, she tried to reason, safer.  There was a part of her, barely acknowledged, that was terrified of seeing the judgment in Trish's eyes - Jessica can admit that now with some small measure of shame -Trish Walker might have the looks of a Greek goddess but she’s no Athena. Strange, how it was Kilgrave who brought them back together.

Erik frowns as if the argument is plain: “If kicks don’t work -”

“Punch them in the dick? Awesome. You should write fortune cookies.” Tersely, Jessica nods her chin at the security footage for the outside building and says: “Do you recognise her?”

Erik peers at the screen, face intent as he examines the black and white footage before he straightens. He scrubs a hand across his face. “Miranda. The friend I was waiting on.”

“The plastic surgeon?”

Erik’s expression flickers, his voice goes wry. “Miranda’s gift is closer to cellular regeneration – if you will - it has quite the potent kick.”

“So, what? Other than you she didn’t care to share? Not for Mei Jong? Or Xavier? Any of the other dead telepaths?”

Erik’s body angles forward, he looms over her in a line of menace. “Don’t presume to know.”

“And I thought asking a question meant I _didn’t_ understand. I’m a New Yorker,” Jessica points out. “We always sound sarcastic.”

Erik exhales, mayhem close to the surface. He visibly forces himself to relax. “Come and meet her then.” Erik makes a sweeping gesture – ‘after you’.

Warily, Jessica leads the way. In the stairwell she punches the security code for the door and swings it open. Miranda turns, hood over her head, eyes wide. Her skin is ebony, so dark it reflects the light, and she’s barely thirteen if a day. Her tongue, bi-sected, flicks out as she scents the air. “Let me in,” she says urgently.

“Hey, hey!” Jessica presses a hand against her shoulder, holds her back a step or two because Jesus. “What’s the rush?”

“It’sss mid evening, I’m black, it’sss New York, I’m lucky I haven’t been ssshot by a ssstray cop!” Miranda peers around Jessica to address Erik. “Ssseriously, the Ssschool will be expecting me before daylight.”

“No,” Jessica says, with dawning horror. “You’re not bringing a child into this. She’s not going anywhere near Kilgrave.”

“Miranda’s responsible,” Erik says, his voice dark. “Charles’ school taught her well.”

Furious, Jessica presses: “When did you manifest? How long has Miranda had her gifts? You don’t even know if they’re all accounted for yet! She’s thirteen!”

There were different levels to the mutant gene: Charles Xavier wasn’t just a telepath – more than a voice inside your head - he could manipulate the brain into seeing what he wanted, seize muscles or hold a person immobile, he could tweak auditory and sight receptors to create illusions of perfect clarity, there were sub-branches to his talent, levels to it.

“How did you even meet?”

“Ssstranraer,” Miranda snaps, and twists out of Jessica’s reach, fluid as a snake. “Erik found me in Ssstranraer.” Her pupils are vertical, her teeth needle sharp, she looks by turns defiant and uncertain. “He brought me to Xavier’sss Ssschool. He found me a home.”

“You kidnapped her from _Scotland_?”

“It seemed the right thing to do,” Erik drawls, nonchalantly. “Facial recognition software is a bane nowadays, I wasn’t getting out of the country any other way.” He glances at Miranda, expression softening. “Miranda manifested two months after the last telepath died. She was in the facility I attacked.”

Miranda hisses.  Her tongue flicks, scenting the air. She asks earnestly: “It helped?” and to Jessica’s ears she sounds terribly young, seeking approval; trying not to show it. Her voice goes sly. “You turned out handsssome…. Who woulda thought.”

Dryly, Erik replies, “Enormously helpful.”

It gave him new lease to hunt those responsible, Jessica supposes, gave Erik another life-time to find them. “He doesn’t quite match his description,” Jessica concedes, then catches Miranda’s eye. “He’s still old-man grumpy though.”

Startled, Miranda hisses, teeth shining in a bright grin.

“Jessica!” Hogarth calls out.

The lawyer steps out of a vehicle parked discreetly on the opposite curb and walks toward them. The sharp click of her high-heels echoes on the bitumen, the lines of her suit fall perfectly. “We need to talk.”

“Inside,” Erik says to Miranda. “Quick. Wait for me in the kitchen. Don’t say a word to anyone.” The girl darts around Jessica, disappears up the staircase in a flash. Erik pauses a beat, suspicion tight on his face. He stands far enough in the stairwell not to be easily seen. Jessica plants herself directly in front and waits for Jeri Hogarth to arrive.

“What is it?”

Hogarth hesitates. For once Jeri looks harried, the untouchable demeanour presented at court not to be seen on the dark streets of the black site. She flicks an assessing eye over Erik before she starts: “Hope is asking for you, urgently. She has to see you in person right away.”

Jessica turns her wrist over, checks the time on the watch and shakes her head. “It’s too late, visiting hours are done.”

“I know, but there’s a guard, he owes me a favour.” Hogarth bites her lip, she lowers her voice a fraction. “Just go. Ask for Jason Tack. He’ll let you in if you mention my name and his cousin.”

“You’re not coming?”

“Hope asked for privacy. And I – _we_ – have court tomorrow.” Hogarth wraps a perfectly manicured hand around Jessica’s bicep. “If what Hope has to say affects my case, Jessica - you need to tell me, anything that can help.”

Jessica chances a look at Erik and thinks _fuck it_ , Jeri already saw the beating earlier in the day. “Hogarth, do me a favour? Stay here. Work on your briefing, case notes, whatever: but make sure things don’t get out of hand.” Hogarth opens her mouth to object, ready to call Jessica out on the previous favours she hasn’t repaid, including dirt on Wendy. Impatient and on the clock, Jessica speaks over her: “Erik, I’ll be back as soon as I can. Don’t- ” She stops, uncertain of what to add: don’t kill him, don’t implicate Hogarth more than necessary, don’t turn the heat up yet. Jessica grimaces, and goes with: “Stay with Miranda until I get back.  Just…wait for me, okay?”

“And exactly _when_ was this ‘out of hand’ point?” Hogarth snaps. “Was that the day you asked me to represent Hope Schlottman at court? Or the day you kidnapped a man and beat him inside a cell,  _in front of a camera_?”

Silent, Erik withdraws.

Jessica can feel him moving away, climbing the steps one at a time to the kitchen, where the girl waits for him. “Hogarth, just do it.”

 

&&

 

Erik can sense Hogarth as she follows him into the black site, the ring on her finger, the fine necklace at her throat, the weight of the expensive pen inside her designer pocket. She smells like expensive perfume and feels like filigree gold. The lawyer keeps her own counsel but Erik feels her stutter to a stop when she spots Kilgrave. “Watch him,” Erik says in a monotone. Aghast, Hogarth doesn’t answer.

Erik follows Miranda into the kitchen and shuts the door firmly.

The girl’s arms are crossed, her face furious. “He’sss one of usss,” she says.

“Yes.”

“You promisssed! Why’sss he behind a cage? You sssaid Ssstranraer wouldn’t happen again. You sssaid!”

“Don’t waste pity on him,” Erik rebukes sharply. “I may have despised Charles for his foolish ideals but at least he had the backbone to fight for them, to try and protect mutants. The monster inside that cage fights for no one. Least of all you or me.”

Miranda sways, startled at Erik’s vehemence.

“He has the gift of persuasion – can you imagine how different Stranraer would have been if Kilgrave had been there? How bloodless, if he’d told the guards to lower their weapons?” Conscious of Hogarth in the other room, Erik gentles his tone. “The telepaths have been eradicated, our people terrorised, and he’s obsessed with, what – having a good time – women?! Kilgrave turned his back on mutants a long time ago.” Erik can feel the seething mass of anger/grief/righteousness twist inside of him, it spurs his words into fanaticism. “The man sitting inside that cell is a traitor. Don’t waste your compassion on the likes of him. He deserves what’s coming.”

Miranda’s eyes are wide, her tongue flicks out nervously, her earlier aggression abated under Erik’s tirade.

“You have to make a stand; you have to fight,” Erik punctuates. “Otherwise you’re useless.”

Miranda’s silent, staring at the floorboards, shoulders hunched as she considers.

Erik owes her, he knows. Miranda’s gift had been invaluable to him in Scotland – my freedom for a facelift, she had bartered – and Erik had already been struggling, the pain in his chest, vision blurred, he had convinced himself he hadn’t minded dying if he could take some of the fuckers with him. She’s a treasure. Miranda’s _gift_ is a treasure. She is someone Erik has every intention of nurturing. “Did you sense anything when you walked by?” he asks, more calmly.

Miranda turns away from the awkwardness in the room and opens the water tap, drinks straight from the faucet, head bent over the sink. After a minute, she shrugs. “They burned out Kilgrave’sss empathy. Too many needlesss; too many experimental drugsss. They ruined it before it ever had a chance to develop.”

Erik rolls his head on his shoulders, tries to keep the exasperation out of his voice. “So Jessica said.”

Miranda’s tongue flicks out. Her eyes narrow as she straightens, sensing his irritation. “Not empathy in the human sssenssse – compassssssion, underssstanding – but empathy in the mutant sssenssse – experiencing sssomething, _feeling_ it - what another perssson feelsss. Empathy and compulsssion ssshould be twinned, he’sss unbalanced, hisss compulsssion runsss unchecked.”

Plans unfold inside his head; his earlier tactics reshift.

Urgently, Erik takes one step forward. “Can it be fixed?”

“I can fix anything, but why bother? Kilgrave’sss already lived thirty yearsss without empathy. He wouldn’t underssstand what’sss happening; or have the experience, the ssskill-ssset, to properly ussse it.”

“Actually, I prefer it that way.”

 

&&

 

Kilgrave sleeps, he must have: despite the background screams, the water, and his clamped balls because when Hogarth exclaims, appalled: “Oh my god.” Kilgrave jerks so hard he almost racks himself. He’s going to have to kill her…when she takes the gag out, he thinks fuzzily.

He can’t wipe the image of himself from Hogarth’s mind and she has no right to witness this degradation. Kilgrave lifts his head a fraction and forces eye contact. His spine feels fused into a misshapen lump, hunched over. The bark of pain around his balls is now a Doberman’s razor bite, worrying at the flesh, sharp as bloody teeth.

Surreptitiously - with a single look toward the closed door to the kitchen - Hogarth opens the first chamber to his cell. Kilgrave shudders, thinks, _yes, finally!_ And then the bitch shuts it. He screams bloody murder in his own mind; he calls her every unfortunate name he can summon, a dozen besides in another language. He’s going to boil her alive in a _pot_ when this is done.

When Hogarth steps through the second door she’s taken the time to slip her high-heels off. Her face blanches in distaste. Wary eyes flicker rapidly from humbler to gag, then her fingers are on the straps behind his head, feeling for the buckle. It’s humiliating how gratitude prickles in his eyes, the knot in his stomach shot through with anticipation.

“The metal’s fused,” she murmurs.

For a minute, his whole world blackens. His throat seizes, choking on the inserted gag, and hope (Hope) is beyond his grasp. Hogarth backs away. At a loss, she looks around quickly before she seizes Erik’s bag. Hogarth searches it, rummaging inside, wincing every time the bed-springs squeak. Presently, she returns with a knife in hand. It’s like a fucking pirate-ship, how fast Kilgrave’s emotions flip. He could make it a quick death for Jeri yet, he supposes. Kilgrave can be benevolent like that. Pointedly, Hogarth stops directly in front of him and quirks an eyebrow, lording her position.

He’ll have Wendy slice her into a _thousand ribbons_.

“You’ll take care of the divorce papers?” Hogarth barters. There’s steel in her spine, a determination to get everything she wanted and have it now. “That’s the deal. I do this for you and you have Wendy sign today. Or I walk.”

Pained, Kilgrave nods his head.

Hogarth ignores the fused buckles. Instead, she saws through the leather straps around his skull, first one, then the other; when the third dangles loose, Kilgrave works the gag from his jaw and spits it out. It plops into the water below, bobs to the surface with a silent ripple. Kilgrave tries to swallow, dehydrated with no spit to help. It’s not a shout. It’s barely a whisper. It’s instilled with every fibre of his being. “Kill them. Erik first. Go. **_GO._** ”

Hogarth snaps around like a marionette. She yanks a Glock from Erik’s bag – oh, the depths of that fucking bag – and marches out of the room. “Leave the cell open for Christ’s sake!” Kilgrave hollers after her because timing is everything. He reaches around, fumbling for the humbler; simultaneously, Kilgrave stretches his mind, ready to yell the second the cell is no longer soundproof.

Two things happen at once: Erik returns to the room with his helmet in place – as if he strides around Broadway with the bloody thing on - and Hogarth unlocks the outside door. In her stocking feet, she steps out of the chamber with the gun raised.

“ ** _Help me_**!” Kilgrave screams, to anyone in hearing distance. “Help -”

Startled, Erik whirls toward him. The door to the chamber slams shut, blocking Kilgrave’s voice. At the same time, Hogarth fires six rounds in quick succession, so fast the retort sounds as one. The first bullet clips Erik in the shoulder, spins him about like a bottle-top; the other five bullets simply freeze, suspended mid-air, a hairs-breadth from Erik’s centre of mass.

On his hands and knees, Kilgrave feels his chest spasm.

The bullets gleam copper under the fluorescent light. The shout, he thinks despairingly, someone must have heard the shout.

A child flows into the room, teeth glistening. She goes straight for Erik as Hogarth rushes from the opposite side. Erik steps back, avoiding the girl and backhanding Hogarth. Stunned senseless, Jeri slumps. The empty Glock, jerked out of her grip, wraps around Hogarth’s wrist three-fold. Erik sways dangerously, one hand clamped around his shoulder, and spins around to face the child.  Erik’s kinder to the girl. A chair blows across the room like tumbleweed, end over end. Spindly legs pin the girl bodily against the nearest wall, the seat cushion flush against her chest, and keeps her there. In the direct aftermath, the silence in the room falls heavy.

From opposite sides of the glass, the two men stare at one another.

Faintly, Kilgrave thinks. _Oh, shit._

“I’m going outside,” Erik says, eventually. His face is flat, body gone stiff-legged with pain. He’s talking to the girl as much as Kilgrave, letting them both know his intentions, warning them he’s not far. He’s eyes are shiny, pinned on Kilgrave. “It’s better I make sure there’s _not_ an angry mob outside, ready to rush us.”

“There was no one out there,” the girl offers. Her voice quakes. “It’s the warehouse district…I didn’t mean to.”

Erik’s tone was threaded through with anger; Kilgrave wasn’t aware of its absence until now, too caught up in his own spiking agony. For the first time, it occurs to him he might not survive Erik’s reckoning. Kilgrave’s mouth opens and closes but he can’t think of a single clever word, his repartee dried up. He wants to argue that he had to try, he wants to say, wouldn’t you?

“Hush,” Erik reassures the girl. “It’s alright.” He examines the inside of the cell intently until he catches sight of the knife Hogarth had used. He flattens the blade, re-zippers the black bag and stalks out of the building. Here’s an uncomfortable truth: a psychopath can make any line of argument sound perfectly reasonable – here’s another - Erik knows the psychology of waiting.

“I’m sorry,” Kilgrave says, experimenting with the words. They feel loaded on his tongue.

Hobbled, he inches away on the floor, finds the furthest corner from the entry and hugs his chest to his knees. It takes a painstaking amount of time to travel even that far; he’s shaking, fine tremors that won’t stop.

Outside somewhere, Erik prowls the grounds like a watchdog, and the girl pinned on the wall replies: “You haven’t grown up yet.” The child sounds puzzled when she adds, “You’re ssstunted.”

“Oh for god’s sake, I take it back,” Kilgrave rasps, and bangs his head against the floor. “Stop helping.”

 

&&

 

Bedford Hills Correctional Facility is a one-hour drive from New York City. Jessica Jones makes it in less than forty-two minutes. “I was told to ask for Officer Jason Tack,” she says to the duty guard at admissions. He’s a cliché, overweight and bored, there’s an old ketchup stain on his uniform, a plumber’s crack when he leans forward. “I need to see an inmate named Hope Schlottman.”

“Yeah? Try again at visiting hours.”

Impatiently, Jessica insists: “Get Tack.”

The man looks up, clacking his tongue in irritation. “He’s not rostered for night duty. Like I said, come back tomorrow.”

It stops Jessica cold, plants a seed of doubt in her mind. It makes her thirsty. “Wait, he went home early?”

“No,” the guard snaps, at the end of his tether. “He’s on RDOs. Won’t be back till Thursday. You got business with an inmate, then come again tomorrow.” He slams the window shut.

“Son of a bitch,” Jessica says, with dawning realisation.

 

&&

 

When Erik re-enters the chamber, the blood splatter on his left flank doesn’t correspond with Hogarth’s bullet wound to his right shoulder. One hand keeps clenching into a fist, the right dangles uselessly at his side, a river of red beads from his fingernails and spots the floor. The alien properties of his helmet gleam like starlight.  As he approaches, the doors to the cell open and slam like shutters in a hurricane.  Erik stops just inside the second door and looks down.

The gag Kilgrave wore all night bobs nearby in the water.

“Put it back in,” Erik instructs, his voice gone dead. “Or I’ll put it in your ass and fuck you with it.”

On the far side of the room, Kilgrave’s hands claw against the floor. “I’m sorry – “ he says, because he doesn’t know what else to do. Erik told him at the start nothing would alter the outcome and Jessica’s not here. “Don’t –“

“You have five seconds,” Erik intones.

Hobbled, he can’t cross the length of the room on his knees in the allotted time-frame. Kilgrave wastes two seconds just raising his head to stare, mouth slack. “I’ll do whatever you want,” he tries.

“Yes,” Erik responds. “You will.” He lets the manacles bundle together, pulling hands and ankles in, locking them tight, until Kilgrave’s body resembles a parcel. “Three.”

“No!" Kilgrave says, his voice gone frantic.  "Wait, please!"

“Two,” Erik counts.

The humbler vibrates, as if grasped by an invisible hand. The bar raises itself a mere fraction, and Kilgrave’s hips try to go with it. His balls, in their captive vice, are the first part of his anatomy to follow. There’s no please this time. Kilgrave’s head is thrown back, every muscle in his neck corded.

“One,” Erik finishes, and with a flick of his hand, yanks the humbler to standing hip-height.

Kilgrave’s groin follows, hips, lower belly; the first rib peels off the concrete. The abrupt tip forward flattens his upper torso, pushes his face straight into the water, so Erik doesn’t hear his inhuman scream when he’s dragged across the floor, just sees the way his entire body ripples, thrashing like a fish. With a thought, Erik drags the humbler from one side of the room to the other - and after it goes the weight of Kilgrave’s long frame - skimming over water like a stone.

It’s quicker, smoother than dragging a person across rough earth. It’s over in a flash, but for the man who was literally strung up by his balls, it’s a different level of torment. Erik lets the humbler unwrap, lets the two pieces of metal tumble aside. The scrotum sags free. Blood rushes back. If anything, Kilgrave’s scream ratchets higher, louder. He convulses; eyes squeezed shut, seized by earthquakes.

Standing over him, Erik puts one boot between Kilgrave’s splayed legs. He nudges the sole against the tip of Kilgrave’s cock.

Kilgrave’s eyes fly open. He flails to the left and vomits, a thin stream of bile and yellow matter.

“Do you know the ironic thing?” Erik asks. “The mutant in the other room is Miranda Mershell – her ability is regeneration. She can’t use it on herself, only others.” Erik rubs at the string of numbers tattooed on his skin, worn pale, faded to a mild blue. “My bullet wound can’t be treated when Miranda wants to help you. Her teeth are venomous, and your compulsion is fixed in her mind. Which means if I have to wait, _you_ have to wait.” Erik shrugs. “Jessica says it takes ten hours before your will wears off an unsuspecting victim. Then it’s ten hours of this, I’m afraid.” Erik nudges his boot, harder this time, stabbing into the bruised meat between Kilgrave’s legs.

“Grotesque swelling of the scrotum means your prick will be twisted out of alignment. Fluid will fill the sack. In the next hour you’re going to swell so badly the skin will crack and peel off your balls like sunburn. Any pressure on your groin will feel like the bottom rung of Hades – and that’s provided there isn’t an aneurism racing through your bloodstream.” Erik pitches his weight forward, applies _pressure._

Kilgrave twitches as if the electricity has gone live in the water. There’s no comprehension in his gaze, his pupils blown wide as a drug addict’s. Wherever he flung himself, he’s far from understanding.

Slowly, Erik takes his boot off the man’s prick. No point continuing if Kilgrave’s not registering what Erik is saying. Shoulder throbbing, blood running slick down his forearm, Erik exits the room.

He avoids Miranda’s eyes on the other side. He can already see her pallor, ash-grey as a ghost. He sits close to the child but out of venom range, and tries to keep his expression contained, his excitement hidden. There are three corpses outside - drawn by the other man’s reach, as well as the two women infected inside here - and Kilgrave had promised (threatened) a demonstration Erik wouldn’t soon forget; he’d provided one sufficient to make Erik’s heart _sing_.

His skin is buzzing; thrilled as Erik is.

It’s hard not to stand up and pace. He wants to move, get on with his hunt, he wants to leave now, he wants Kilgrave to say _Tell me the truth_ to any person Erik directs him at, cut through the misdirection and lies. Erik wants to kill the creators of the virus. There’s a part of Erik ready to bundle Kilgrave out of the door – his argument with Jessica hasn’t been resolved – but he stays where he is because he owed her a payment, gave his word, and if she chooses to collect on a human called Hope then it’s her folly.

Impatiently, Erik settles down to wait for Jessica’s return.

He wants to stopper Kilgrave’s lush mouth, break him in private, he wants to go far away from here, to England, or Scotland, where the trail first went cold. He wants to find everyone connected to the contagion, from scientist to lowly tech, to the janitor who had buffed the floors.

Inside his own trousers, Erik is achingly hard, he's been stiff-legged since Hogarth first attacked. Once upon a time he might have ignored this coiled lust – he did for Charles’ sake – but he doesn’t feel as generous this time around, not for this man. Erik resented being called here by Jessica, but he hadn’t realized the opportunity about to fall into his lap.

“Would Professssssor X approve?” Miranda whispers. She hasn’t fled, Erik supposes, then again she’s pinned to the wall. “They talk about him at the ssschool, sssometimesss, hisss ethicsss.”

“No,” Erik states. “He wouldn’t.” Charles wasn’t here to argue Erik out of a chosen course of action; Charles no longer gets a say…and the man in the other room is so temptingly similar in his talents. “You felt what he did; you’re still feeling it now. Tomorrow we have to march Kilgrave into an open court-room without a gag and have him compel Hope’s release. We have to trust him to do this without unleashing the same power on us. Do you _actually_ think the chances are good he’ll behave for this outing? Close your eyes, child, if you want, or get some sleep, but this is far from over.”

“He’sss all blocked up inssside,” Miranda says, nonsensically. She’s regretting sneaking out of the school, Erik assumes, as if coming here was an excursion, a fun adventure to be had. “The wallsss are so high.”

Erik looks at her sidelong. “Do you still want to help? Are you compelled to help him?”

“Yesss.”

“Do you want to attack me?” Erik asks, deliberately.

He’s losing blood rapidly from the shoulder wound, and his window of opportunity (Hogarth’s window) is fast narrowing.

“No,” Miranda answers. Her eyes are faraway, directed inward as if listening. She’s staring at Kilgrave’s semi-conscious form, his freed limbs, open mouth, at the gag floating nearby in the water. “You’re not hurting him anymore.” Hesitantly, she adds, as if searching for a different interpretation. “He’s sleeping.”

“No harm there,” Erik agrees. He smiles faintly. “Your visage is on the seal of every medical hospital in the world, girl, dagger and snake. Don’t let them say you’re a monster. Heal me, do it quick, after you’re done attend to him. I want you to return to Xavier’s school after this. Don’t linger. Tell Storm you might need protection; tell her you could be in danger. If you ever see Kilgrave again without me in attendance, run far, and don’t look back. Do you understand me?” Erik wants to touch her shoulder, reassure Miranda not everything is black and white, that monstrosity is so often found in the ordinary.

“Medusa,” she corrects.

Miranda hadn’t decided on a name yet, medicine and snakes, the crawling horror people felt when they looked at her visage, Erik imagines she likes the dichotomy of it. Professor X. Magneto. Beast. Ninety-years-old and the nicknames seem childish now, a secret club, a back-door handshake, yet they still worked as a perfect insight into the mutant ability of the individual. “Medusa,” Erik acknowledges.

Black eyes flickering from Erik to Kilgrave, she says. “I can heal everything.”

From here on out, Erik can’t afford sentimentality.

 

&&

 

For the longest time, he doesn’t know his name, or his whereabouts. For an eternity, he’s nothing but raw nerve, agony from the stomach down. He lies absolutely still in the lapping water.

“Don’t cry, Kevin,” a woman chides in the background, the audio scratchy and old.

Kevin presses his hands over his ears, but even the smallest movement is a flash fire, and the screaming doesn’t stop, just loops over again, rises in pitch. Blank, he stays small, watching the images on the wall until a man and a girl enter his watery surroundings. Memory blossoms. It pops inside his head like an overripe fruit. “No,” he groans.

The man is wearing a helmet; the young girl is not.

Erik grins with a razor mouth and says: “If you say a word to Miranda, I’ll do worse.”

Worse? Kevin can’t comprehend what worse could be – he’s still shying away from what’s been done.

The girl falters visibly as she approaches then lays a careful hand on Kilgrave’s stomach, over the knotted tissue of his surgery scar.  “Husssh, I know it hurtsss. You don’t want to be in thisss body - not for the ressst of the night. Held together by ssspit and glue. You cut yourssself in half once upon a time; let me fix you.”

His eyes are squeezed shut and what she’s saying doesn’t make a lick of sense. Kilgrave can’t think past the humbler; he doesn’t want to see the mess between his legs, and if she’s talking about being cut in half then that’s where his mind dwells, a blind panic his balls were ripped from him. “Sh-shut up,” Kilgrave stammers.

It doesn’t sound like him. It’s not who he was when he first awoke in the black site. It’s not how he behaved with Jessica, gleeful, manic, carefree. Kevin’s not thinking when he says it, he’s certainly not careful with his choice of words. He just wants it to be quiet. One second of _silence_.

Miranda slams her mouth shut, she hisses in distress, body recoiling until Erik lays a heavy hand on her shoulder. Encouraged, she leans over Kilgrave. Miranda presses with her hands against his abdomen and the relief is so sudden, abrupt, Kilgrave arches into the contact. It’s the complete opposite of every sensation he knows - has known for days now - the pain leaves in a desolate wave as relief rushes in, heady as an aphrodisiac. Kilgrave gasps on the floor, eyes watering with the unexpected surcease. The bruises on his torso from Jessica’s beating, the missing tooth, the scars from the bus-crash, the endless injuries of the night all heal without leaving a trace, as if they never happened, a crime residing in his own head. Without the evidence of it – it somehow feels worse – a foggy disconnection between fact and appearance.

“Miranda,” Erik says, silkily. “Would you like to leave now?” His shirt is black with blood, torn at the shoulder.  Erik pulls the girl to her feet without any sign of hindrance. Pale skin is visible, through the gaping material of the bullet hole, but no wound in his flesh, as if Hogarth never shot him. The child nods, quick and frantic. Obligingly, Erik opens and closes the doors for her, one by one. The healer darts out and down the stairs without saying a word, vanishing from the black site.

Kilgrave rolls onto his side.

On tape, Louis Thompson says: “Be a good boy for mummy and daddy, Kevin.”

“I warned you,” Erik says, as the videotape flickers into a different lab, a different child, a different experiment.

Embarrassingly it takes a full minute before Kilgrave’s mind ticks over into understanding, until he traces the conversation back to the roots, when the people in his cell still had no names. “No!  I didn't _say_ anything!" Kilgrave yelps.   He was already stretched thin - even before Erik had arrived - dealing with the shocks, Jessica's smack-down, the drug that rendered him unconscious in the first place.  He can’t handle another punishment - not at Erik's intensity, and not so soon after the last - they’re coming too quick to process.  His stomach churns but there’s nothing left to throw up.

“You did say something. No, you weren’t supposed to say anything at all. In fact, it could be argued you have selective memory.” Erik rolls his right shoulder in an exaggerated movement, as if working out the kinks. “Before I lost my temper and dragged you around by the testicles, I gave you an implicit order about a gag and its current placement.”

“Where’s Jessica!?” Kilgrave cries out. His heart is beating triple-time, his skin clammy. He gets his knees and feet under him, staggering like a newborn colt as he lurches away.

Amused, Erik asks: “You think she’s going to save you?”

No. No he doesn’t - but she _might_ , because Hope hasn’t left Kilgrave yet - and he was ever an optimist.  Having everything he asked for instantly occur did that to a man.  He edges along the window pane, trying to see beyond the desk. “I want Jessica here.”

“I’m going to give you a choice, you’re keen on choices. I gave you an order earlier to travel from one side of the room to the other in five seconds - you didn’t make it - so you can spend the rest of the night on your knees with the gag in your ass, being fucked by a fake dick.” Relentless, Erik adds: “I'll allow you to lube it at first: but I imagine by the first hour any slick would have worn off. By the second hour you’ll probably be bloody, by the fifth....” Erik trails off. He rubs his fingertips together, flaking dried blood into the water.  There's exaggerated thoughtfulness to his tone when he continues: “There’s metal in the cap, I could extend the length, I could ram that gag straight into your colon. There’s plenty of time yet before dawn.” Kilgrave staggers. He slaps one hand against the window for support. He can’t think, he can’t remember how long it’s been, counting backwards with his thoughts helter-skelter. Had it been ten hours? Did Erik bring Miranda in before the compulsion wore off? He lost consciousness, he doesn’t _know._

Kilgrave’s head is dizzy with the threat, and where the hell is Jess!

In the centre of the room, Erik stands predator still. “Or two: I’ll rape you. Consider it a kindness. It’ll be over in minutes rather than hours: unlike a machine I _am_ going to come, eventually, and your transgression for Miranda will be paid in full. But I won’t use lube. Who knows, I might even be wider than the gag. But be relieved, Kevin, at least I’m providing you with an option.”

Tonelessly, Kilgrave mutters, “That’s no choice.”

Taffy, his emotions are stretching from shock to anxious disbelief. He hated the word ‘rape’, was insulted when Jessica flung it at him, because Kilgrave was sure to make her come, he always made her come, and maybe he could have asked Jessica a question before he whisked her away to the Chinese restaurant, but why bother, when Kilgrave knew what outcome _he_ wanted.  Truth was, it was easier when everybody was agreeable.  Truth was, he liked it when people obeyed him.

Erik shrugs. “Matter of opinion. Five seconds to decide.”

“Wait --”

It’s not enough time.

“If you fail to make a decision then _I_ will.  I’ll choose the humbler again, I’ll hang you off the roof like a chandelier. I’ll keep you there until your sack tears, do you understand me?”

“Wait - ”  He knows the stretch, is intimately familiar with it, Kilgrave doesn't need imagination to fill in the gaps.

“Three.” Erik counts.

His sense of time is like a Mobius strip, it speeds up, slows down, it back-flips into impossible loops. Crippled, Kilgrave can’t make sense of it, he can’t _think_. “You! I’ll take you!” because the thought of the humbler is enough to break him into a thousand shards, anything, anything but that.

 

&&

 

Kilgrave’s colour has gone high, he’s breathing like he ran a mile, flushed so prettily from neck to navel. His teeth are bared.  His cock, briefly full with blood after the healing, is like the rest of his body, long and narrow; it rests shyly against Kilgrave’s inner thigh. He’s beautiful, Erik thinks: dangerous, too, but so much more malleable than Charles ever was. He looks poised to leap, as if wrenching Erik’s helmet off is a play to seriously consider - despite the consequences. He looks cornered, knowing the helmet won’t budge without Erik’s express will behind it.

“I told you when we were first started; you won’t enjoy what’s coming.”

“Quite!” Kilgrave snaps, a waver in his voice. He keeps looking toward the stairs, searching for Jessica, Erik supposes. At the suspicion, Erik burns, gone molten hot inside. “You’re not my type for one!”

“Well,” Erik demurs, thinking of those gifts, of _types_. “You are mine.” When it’s obvious Kilgrave has no rejoinder, no idea of what to do to prevent what’s to occur, Erik instructs: “Hands on the window. I want you standing in front of the camera.”

The blush travels higher, to his cheeks now, twin points of colour as Kilgrave centres himself as instructed; doubtless he’s replaying conversations in his head. He knows where this is headed.

The camera light flashes, the video set to record.

 

&&

 

Get it over with, Kilgrave thinks viciously, as his muscles tighten and bunch.

He hears the rustle of the other man undressing, clothes folded with particular care, before Erik approaches. He feels raw, like an exposed nerve, hypersensitive to every draft of air. Images won’t stop scrolling in his head; snapshots of his own personal body horror - held under the water until his lungs gave; the moment he felt his skin peel, how his balls burst with excess fluid. Kilgrave jerks, tries to run from the immediacy of it – he wants to deny the clarity – he wants the memory, the sensation of it, calloused over by time. His heart feels like a freight train, gathering speed. He’s distended between the legs, gone long and soft with the rush of blood.

“Ssh,” Erik says, and taps the gag against Kilgrave’s mouth again.

Miserably, he says, “No.”

When the gag taps more insistently, he feels the internal give – tired of hurting. Kilgrave’s mouth opens. Slowly, the gag settles - gentler than the bruising entry at the start of the night - the remaining straps pulling taut, the metal on the buckles stretching to make up the distance, to hold it secure.

“Good,” Erik says, and drops a kiss on Kilgrave’s nape, where the hair on his neck has risen, where a thousand patterned dots, needle scars, lay, where Kilgrave can't tolerate being touched.

 

&&

 

With the gag secure, Erik takes the helmet off. His hair is stiff with sweat. He scrubs a hand through it while he examines their dual reflection in the glass. “Keep your eyes open. Stare ahead.” Behind Kilgrave, Erik drops upright onto his knees. He parts tight ass cheeks and drives his tongue inside.

Kilgrave’s forehead strikes the window. He rises up high, balanced on his tip-toes, as if Erik had lifted him with the power of his tongue. Erik chases him, licking deep. No lube, just wet muscle and both index fingers prying Kilgrave apart for it. Erik laps, lazy stabs of his tongue catching at the rim. He nips the newly healed balls with his teeth, noses the perineum. Erik has every right, he reasons - Kilgrave _chose_ him – and Erik wants to know every speck, taste, any unexplored corner. It’s not about the other man, per se, it’s about Erik owning what’s been freely given. By the time he’s finished Kilgrave is sloppy with spit. His hole spasms, stretched wide by hooked fingers.

Erik drags him off the window and down. Legs splayed to either side of Erik, he drops.

Erik doesn’t withdraw his digits, preferring to keep Kilgrave pried open and gaping. He sinks, impaled by his own body weight and a hole stretched cruelly wide. Erik thrusts his cock upward in sharp stabs, until properly seated, then slips his fingers out, one at a time. Joined, Erik shivers, encased in heat. The man in his lap remains rigidly still, his breathing gone shallow. Erik rubs a palm across his lower belly soothingly, then presses inward hard, trying to feel himself in outline, to measure how deep Kilgrave has been penetrated, if only in fancy.

“If you want this over with,” Erik murmurs, teeth beside his ear, “you need to move.”

Kilgrave swallows. Hesitantly, his thigh muscles bunch. He drags himself off Erik’s cock, breathing hard through his nose. When Erik is just breaching him, Kilgrave stills, wavering on the tip as if about to pull off. Erik wraps both arms around his chest and drags Kilgrave down again, smoother this time, invading every inch. “You tried to kill me tonight,” Erik reminds. He opens his palm, revealing a single copper bullet - ta-dah - like a magician presenting a trick. The nose is flat, distorted from impact. “Miranda healed the wound. I thought it best to keep the reminder, though. I thought I’d _return_ it to you.”

He can feel Kilgrave’s desire to speak in every line of his body, see the alarm in his expression. Kilgrave presses into Erik, ass fluttering as he tenses all over. Breathless, Erik laughs, grinding into it. With more alacrity, Kilgrave rises and drops, corkscrewing down in an effort to get Erik off. His method: dirty quick.

For a novice, he’s positively inspired.

Erik allows it until he really _is_ on the brink of coming. He’s been on the edge for so long now, body starved for it. Erik groans, forces his hand into the shadows between their bodies to squeeze the base of his own cock. Dizzy, he’s roiling with pleasure, stormy with unchecked violence. “Stay still,” he bites out and waits until he’s no longer poised, ready to go off like a firecracker. Erik lets go when his orgasm recedes.  Aching with his own aborted need, hair plastered to his forehead, Erik reaches around Kilgrave to take his measure; neither hard nor soft, the other man is semi-firm. Erik fondles him, he pinches the tip of Kilgrave’s cock and holds it upright, in a parody of an erection.

There’s a moment where Kilgrave doesn’t react at all, then he spreads his legs wider, as if expecting a hand job to go along with his rimming. Cheeky, Erik muses, as if this is about _him,_ when jacking Kilgrave off is the last thing on Erik's agenda. Erik lets the bullet unravel with a thought, turns it into burnished liquid - thin and long - and feeds it down the inside of Kilgrave’s urethra, from tip to root, where it hardens into a thin sound – penetrating him doubly.

Kilgrave makes a noise - loud and garbled through the gag - he curls inward at the unexpected intrusion. Cool air rushes against Erik’s torso as Kilgrave rests his forehead against the window, a space growing between their upper bodies. Kilgrave's spine is a sickle curve.  He shudders uncontrollably.  The change in position, the altered angle, the _squeeze_ , almost sets Erik off again.

Erik wonders what name Kilgrave had just called. Or in his lilting accent, had it been a curse? Maybe nothing, just a series of sounds and soft whimpers? With his eyes wide, staring at the camera, would Kilgrave remember the slack acceptance of Erik’s control, this day? Or only when forced to re-watch it? Would Kilgrave know this was the moment - here – where he broke and broke again?

Erik bites an earlobe, he worries it with his teeth, and lets Kilgrave’s plugged cock slip free from his fingertips.  “I said you wouldn’t like this.” Erik warns. He doesn’t care about the other man’s enjoyment. He doesn’t care if Kilgrave gets off at all. He thrusts slowly from below, straining against their combined body weight; watching Kilgrave’s reactions until he flinches, until his jouncing cock dribbles a spurt of pre-come from the tip.

“Prostate,” Erik says triumphantly, and then absolutely hammers it.

 

&&

 

Kilgrave’s skin-pricklingly aware he won’t come from this. He can’t ignore that it’s a man behind him. The rimming was mortifying – a pleasure so dark Kilgrave was squirming on it – but it wasn’t enough to tip him over the edge. His cock is at half-mast, drooling incessantly, because Erik is milking the prostate with each glancing stroke. The pleasure rolling out of him is muted, it comes from the centre of Kilgrave in overlapping waves, nowhere near intense as having a hand on his dick. It leaves Kilgrave gasping, unfulfilled, so he _knows_ he won’t come.

He won’t come because he’s being buggered, and those small zings of pleasure can’t compensate for the fact it’s unwanted.

He twitches, sweats, he grinds himself to get Erik off but he won’t come. Some satisfaction derives from this last measure of control still available to him - his cock remains half hard, bobbing from Erik’s thrusts. Kilgrave’s skin itches from toes to scalp. He’s caught in a state of suspension, refusing to move forward, unable to step back. Stretched uncomfortably full by Erik’s girth, Kilgrave tries to ignore it – as much as he can – the burn in his breached cock, the weirdness in his ass, and concentrates on getting Erik _out_ of him because that’s something he _can_ control. Kilgrave rocks in counter-point, breathing through his nose. His skin is slick with effort, watching Erik in the reflection for a tell, some sign he’s close. It comes with a change of tempo. Erik’s strokes become erratic, his hot breath stutters on Kilgrave’s nape.

In the reflection, Erik’s face goes positively fierce with concentration.

_It's over.  He’s going to come,_ is Kilgrave’s last thought. Inside his semi-flaccid dick, the sound moves, reforms into molten liquid. Like Pegasus springing forth from Medusa’s slain body, the very shape of it changes.

 

&&

 

Kilgrave’s eyes bulge. He bites the gag so hard that Erik thinks his teeth will crack. His ass _clenches_.

Erik folds over the line of his spine, gasping in pleasure as he comes, his own cock spurting frantically. Erik pants through it, strung out on a high like a junkie. It’s a moment before he dares to move, shivering and hypersensitive. Erik hooks his chin over Kilgrave’s shoulder, peers down the length of the body to have a look, to ascertain for himself. For a second – an instant – Kilgrave looked _away_ from the camera; trying to get a read on Erik’s reactions. For a blink – a fraction of an instant – Kilgrave appeared calm, as if he had decided on a course of action and committed to it, as if _Kilgrave_ could affect the outcome. It was easy to reform the sound; all it took was a flicker of malice.

At four points along the length of the urethra, it had speared out, punching through flesh like water.

Kilgrave’s been pierced.  Through and through. The copper bars in the meat of his cock bristle like an antenna.

Erik considers the aesthetics, then _bends_ the ends over to meet each other seamlessly, turning them into four copper rings. The perfect semi-circles run the underside of Kilgrave’s penis, a ladder of hot skin and metal. When Kilgrave isn’t hard, when his cock isn’t curved toward his own stomach, the adornment will be near invisible, hidden behind his thighs.

Kilgrave goes into lock-down.

His ass clamps like a vice, and Erik can’t untangle their bodies even if he had wanted to. At the risk of scraping his own dick raw, he laughs. Erik’s balls spasm, his body goes boneless as he shoots the last of his orgasm. Pressed against him, every muscle in Kilgrave’s body has corded in anguish.

Experimentally, Erik touches the metal. Knuckles bumping over the rings and up to the slit with its drops of pre-cum, gone rosy with a hint of blood, then down, over copper and flesh, until he can cradle the recently healed balls. “Look at the _camera_ ,” Erik reminds.

 

&&

 

Frantic, Kilgrave throws himself into Erik, blind and instinctual. Tears leak out of his eyes. He doesn’t want to be in this body, feeling this; he can’t be here anymore. Everything hurts and the hand on his cock hasn’t stopped. He can’t stay present without going insane. His voice is useless, it stopped nothing of what Erik did. Kilgrave’s thrashing at the windows of his own mind.

Brutally Erik jerks his cock, the weight of the rings making it list.

Erik’s nestled inside, softening – but with every internal muscle in Kilgrave’s body bearing down - he feels twice as large. He sobs, wet noises escaping the gag as his eyes run, as his nose blocks up with snot. Distressed, he rocks on the dick splitting him, not cognizant of how it looks on camera, only that it hurts too much to remain still.

“See, it’s over,” Erik soothes. “Fifteen minutes and done.”

_Nonono_ , Kilgrave cries, and watches Erik’s hand loosen, revealing his pierced shaft. It’s not a Prince Albert, the rings don’t hang from the foreskin, as painless as an earlobe, it’s bisecting the very meat of him, around solid tissue and four thousand sensory nerve endings. _Nonono,_ he thrashes, when Erik squeezes his hand shut, tightening it into a clenched fist. He breaks in that cell. Kilgrave shatters without a single word being said. The wall he built long ago - when Kilgrave decided those other children didn’t exist, when he couldn’t handle their agony plus his own - crumbles, unable to support the strain.

_I can fix you,_ Miranda had whispered. _I can help. Jussst like you sssaid; you told me to help_.

There’s something close by that _doesn’t_ hurt, shining bright in pleasure, the opposite of Kilgrave’s jagged reality. Kilgrave grabs hold of the wordless emotion, drags the sensation of _satiation_ close. He clings to it like a life-raft in a treacherous sea. Hurtshurtshurts is a bass drum his body can’t escape, a howling wind, but every so often there’s a bright flare of ecstasy in the dark, the aftershocks of a person resting in post coital bliss.

 

&&

 

“I’ve got you,” Erik says.

He’s accustomed to the surgical precision of Charles’ mind. As an old man Erik would tap the side of his head, hyperaware of the intrusion, and say aloud: _What are you rummaging for, old friend?_

_I’m looking for hope,_ Charles would reply, pained, sitting across the hall in his wheelchair.

For the first time in this overly long night, Erik finally has it.

Kilgrave is so similar to Charles yet nothing alike in temperament – he’s not a telepath – there is no voice speaking inside Erik’s mind, but fifty years of friendship with Charles has lent Erik a certain sensitivity to the workings of his own mind - and to an extent - a heightened awareness of intrusion.  The taste of copper floods the recesses of his head.

The helmet twitches, hovers to shoulder height in reaction, because _this_ is what Miranda warned him of.

Erik knows the metal intimately – discharged earlier in the night - it shattered his own bone before Miranda tended the injury, a bullet fired by Hogarth and returned to Kilgrave with interest. “Is that you, Kevin?” he asks.  There is no reply, just the ephemeral sense of  _otherness_  and metal fashioned - pinioned - together. 

No small wonder a mutant - gifted with empathy and compulsion - went insane inside of an experimental facility. Curiously, Erik waits. He flexes his hips once, sending off starbursts of good-so-tight- _satisfied_. Erik’s fingers, his toes curl. Against him Kilgrave sags. The lines of etched pain in his face don’t run as deep, but his colour is so white Erik can see the smattering of freckles on his cheeks, across the bridge of his nose.

Carefully, Erik works the gag free. He repositions the bunk, dragging it from the wall and over to the window, and resettles them both. “I’ve got you,” he affirms, sharp with satisfaction. “Got you now.”

Here’s a home truth: Kevin hated mutants.

Not surprisingly; both his parents did too.

 

&&

 

Jessica makes the return trip from Bedford Hills at speed. In total, she’s absent from the black site for an hour and twenty-two minutes, and spends the entire time cursing Jeri Hogarth’s name, birthright, and her entire existence.

Jessica runs up the stairs three at a time, ready to rip Hogarth a new one, to shout what the hell were you thinking and falters at the top of the staircase.

Hogarth’s sprawled on the ground, hands looped together, her body prone. Blood drips from a jagged cut on her right temple. A discarded chair lies beside her, the bulk of it flat as a pancake, including the legs. Scattered bullets, five of them, litter the floor, undamaged, as if the snub noses hadn’t impacted against anything. In the centre of the viewing window, and far away from the wall, Erik Lehnsherr sits upright on the metal bunk.

Throat tight, Jessica asks: “What happened to the girl?”

“I sent her home. You were right, no point in traumatising Miranda with any of this. She’s far too impressionable.”

Jessica takes a step closer, ready to call him on the bullshit lie but her attention refocuses. Belatedly, her world lurches off axis. Erik isn’t wearing his helmet. Asleep, Kilgrave isn’t gagged. “Shit,” she says. “Shit, shit.”

Erik’s changed into spare clothing since she left - impeccable in a black turtleneck with matching slacks – his mouth twitches at her reaction. For the first time Jessica’s known him Erik looks calm, outwardly relaxed. Lying beside him, Kilgrave’s head is pillowed on his thigh. In direct contrast, Kilgrave’s milky white. The shadows under his closed eyelids are violet, almost bruised; he’s so still he appears comatose. Erik’s long trench coat is laid out over the top of him, covering Kilgrave from knees to waist. He looks blurred at the edges, surprisingly young. He looks like he doesn’t want to wake up.

Jessica’s stomach twists. “Are you insane?”

Erik raises his chin. “Eighteen minutes and counting. He hasn’t used compulsion.” He smiles – bright with triumph. “This is what you wanted, or the first step of it; this is why you asked me here, to force his compliance.”

“He’s unconscious,” Jessica snaps. “Get out of the room, or put your goddamn helmet on!”

“No. He’s really not.  The problem with using an under-developed muscle is that he has to concentrate to make it work.”

Erik could be infected, he could already be under Kilgrave’s control; Kilgrave could sit up, smile, say _surprise!_ Jessica’s stomach flattens, instinct coils her body into fight or flight.

Erik sees all of that on her face and more, his voice gentles: “Neither of us would still be sitting in a dank cell if he was controlling me. You _know_ that. He’d go after you, Jessica, in a flash.” Erik fiddles with the helmet resting beside him. Reluctantly he slips it back onto his head. Its natural properties protect him from being controlled, or read, and Jessica feels herself relax. In direct contrast, Kilgrave groans. He jerks randomly, like a hunting dog asleep. Surprisingly tender, Erik cards his fingers through the dark hair; half of Erik’s features remain obscured by the helmet but his touch is light.

Afterward, he joins her outside with his spine ramrod straight, his voice clipped. “We’ll chance court first thing in the morning. Hope should be released by the end of the day. Then you and I are done, payment square.”

On the bunk, isolated in the hermetically sealed room, Kilgrave’s face is a tapestry of distress.

Dubiously, Jessica asks, “He’ll help. Just like that?”

“He’s in shock,” Erik points out. “He hasn’t had enough time to work out the finer details. I’m sure you understand…and I won’t let Kilgrave find his balance.” As an afterthought, Erik glances at Hogarth and adds: “Your lawyer shouldn’t be trusted…if it’s not an oxymoron.”

“I figured that already,” Jessica says, testily.

Hogarth wanted Wendy out of her life and thought Kilgrave was a means to an end. Erik’s reasoning is the same – if in a different guise – but he _is_ better equipped to handle Kilgrave than Hogarth ever was. Jessica’s tired suddenly, exhausted by it all.  She kneels beside the other woman, checking the gash on Hogarth's scalp.  Not too deep, but the lawyer will wake up with a monster headache.  Erik's expression is bland and remains so until Jessica scowls at him.  With a frown, he unravels the metal from Hogarth's wrists and stands aside as Jessica moves her into the kitchen, closing the door gently behind her. Jeri will be pissed when she wakes up, but at least she's free to leave.

“What happens in a year from now? When you’ve killed everyone responsible for the telepath genocide? Will you finish it? Will you kill him? You know you can’t let Kilgrave go.”  Erik has a tiger by the tail but any long-term plan could backfire so spectacularly. _Will_ backfire, in Jessica’s opinion. It’s just a matter of chance.

“Yes,” Erik admits, coldly. “I’ll kill him…when I’m finished.”

The problem with having a ninety-year-old mind packaged inside a shiny, restored model is that Erik perfected his poker face decades ago. Jessica can’t read a goddamn thing.

 

&&

 

“Jess,” Kilgrave rasps, in the early hours of the morning.

Outside, New York is beginning to stir, dawn stretches cold fingers over concrete and steel, a monochrome landscape. Over the course of the night Kilgrave hasn’t moved much. He looks like he’s staving off an infection. Erik’s coat pulled tight about his hips. His eyes are glazed, fixed on her as he repeats. “Jess?”

Shortly, she answers. “What?”

“Your original deal,” he finally says, as if the effort cost him. “I free Hope you let me go.”

It feels like ages ago, when Jessica first offered it, fuming at the way Kilgrave had refused and made a counter-offer of his own. ‘How about I let Hope go and you stay with me?’ so assured of getting his own way. Jessica watches as he swallows now, the quick bob of his throat as he gathers moisture to speak. Kilgrave’s pushed himself up onto one elbow, braced on his side, it’s hard to look away from the undercurrent of terror on his face. Jessica‘s seen the same desperation in her own features – imaging white horses, flights of rescue – it’s disturbing to see it on the face of her tormentor.

“If I keep my word, do you promise to keep yours? _Will you let me go_?” he reiterates.

“You let Hope go,” she affirms, “and I promise, I’ll do the same for you.”  She’s so tired of thinking about him, about the years of captivity, even after the bus-crash, Kilgrave occupied every available space.

“Now,” he says, without pretence, all of his arrogance in tatters. “Please - let’s go to court now.“

 

&&

 

Kilgrave flinches when Erik returns to his cell. The night is foggy – there’s both a distant and an immediate quality to it – he feels tangled, hot-wired wrong. He has a migraine the size of Texas.

Erik’s helmet is on. He carries the gag like a kid carrying a school-bag, swinging it idly by the strap. In his other hand, he holds out a large water bottle and a stack of clothing. “Drink as much as you can and keep drinking over the course of the day. Urine will settle the inflammation, hasten recovery.”

Kilgrave’s only chanced one look at the rings - folded his own cock upward, out of the way - the metal was smooth, no latch or clasp evident. Kilgrave didn’t touch them after that.

“You were semi-hard when they went in. Unless the metal has some give, you can’t get fully erect, the longer you lengthen the harder the metal pulls against the nerve-endings,” Erik explains. “No more Jessicas or Hopes in your future. Not much of anything, in fact. Unless I’m close by to help.”

“…Help?”  Impotent is such a soul-crushing word – Kilgrave hasn’t felt this amount of black rage since he was ten.

Erik’s mouth opens; he bites his lip wantonly. “It’ll take a year before the piercings fully heal – same as a nipple ring in a woman – you’re going to be feeling the effects for a while.” At the casual mention of permanency, Kilgrave's peripheral vision blurs.

“I’m going to kill you,” he says, aloud, for the very first time.

Erik smiles, wide as a shark. He drops the folded clothing on the bunk. “Get yourself ready, we’re headed to the courts.”

There’s no underwear provided. The jeans are huge, made for a man built like a brick shit house; on Kilgrave they’re in constant danger of sliding off his hips. The t-shirt is plain and black, too wide in the shoulders, too short in the hem. When Kilgrave bends to pull the boots on, the material constricts across his crotch. He staggers with the stab of pain. The rings catch on _something_.  Erik steadies him, thumb stroking the line of Kilgrave’s neck until the dizziness fades.  “Are they yours?” he bites out shakily.

Erik shrugs. “Jessica’s boyfriend, Luke something or other, she had him bring you spare clothing.”

He should be outraged, spitting with jealousy over Jessica’s new love interest. He should be affronted, dressed in cheap threads, in a style of clothing he’d _never_ wear. Instead Kilgrave doesn’t feel much of anything.

Erik continues: “He’s coming along as backup.” Kilgrave nods. “You don’t speak to anyone unless I say so, and I will be within hearing distance of you at all times.” Kilgrave hesitates, watching carefully as Erik folds the gag and pockets it. Erik taps his helmet - a jaunty salute like a gentleman inclining his head to a passing lady - before the rings chitter and dance. In a line, they flip up and down Kilgrave’s cock. It’s the second time he stumbles, hips thrusting mid-air as he’s tugged forward by the piercings.

“S-stop it!”

For a wonder, Erik actually does. He looks amused. “That bullet was inside me, _my_ DNA. I might have bled out if Miranda wasn’t nearby to heal it. I think I would recognise the taste of that copper in any shape:  _find_ it, track it, or change it.  I could rip those rings out one by one, I could leave you with nothing but a cat of nine tails between the legs.” Ominously, Erik leans forward and warns: “ _Don’t_ piss me off.”

On the cold street, his breath misting in front of him, Kilgrave meets Jessica’s new beau: Luke is all muscle, body ripped like an Adonis. He stands near a motorcycle, parked on the curb with Jessica beside him. New York is grey overhead, and around them the factory district has started to stir. The first rush of early morning commuters arrive at the scene. There’re people. There are people _everywhere._ If they swarmed, if they mobbed Erik surely _one_ of them could wrench the helmet off before Erik retaliated?  The dream is so bright, so tantalisingly - lips parted, mouth open with the pure want of it - _but he can't_...he can't risk Erik's last threat, to be torn into ribbons like that, with nothing but a thought.  So far, the mutant has stayed true to every word he's uttered.  

Mindless, the workers dart around them, sparing no attention to the weird party of four huddled on the sidewalk. Jessica is staring at him, face tight, expectant. Luke seems watchful, and Erik is a hard line directly at his back. The cuffs on his limbs flex, as if ruffled.  Kilgrave breathes out until the vision of escape fades.

“How do you want to go about this?” Luke drawls. His voice is deep, melodious.

“Erase the paperwork first, reverse the charges, have the trial dismissed. There’s no point in freeing Hope if she’s re-arrested in a week,” Jessica replies, flatly.

“Judges, lawyers, police, correctional facility: in that order,” Erik agrees. “I’ll take Kilgrave. We’ll make the circuit as fast as we can, then meet you at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility. You should prepare Hope for what’s coming.  Let her know it’s over.”

Kilgrave ignores their plans, the sound of their wound up voices. He’s watching a thirty-year-old walking by, punching at his mobile aggressively as he plays Candy Crush. Irritation swamps Kilgrave – a delayed reaction, he supposes, given the circumstances of the night - yearning to speak, Kilgrave bites his tongue. “Stupid cheating game!” the man curses, and pockets his phone as he walks by. Kilgrave recites names until he’s calm, until his annoyance fades. Kaitlyn, Emma, Jordan, Elizabeth – she had red hair, green eyes, was three years older, she had taught Kilgrave about sex when he was thirteen - Mary, Johanna, freaking-goddamn-cuntofabitch-whodidthistome.

Kirsty, the first woman after Jessica.

Kirsty was boring, so terribly boring, _especially_ after Jess. Sitting at Dover beach, letting her crack joke after frantic joke because he needed a pick-me-up after having both kidneys replaced. Kilgrave had grown tired. In a black mood, he had snapped: “Oh, go walk off a cliff will you.” And watched her scrape the chair back, stride along the boardwalk, and follow the road to the iconic coastline as seagulls pin-wheeled in the air.

He hadn’t meant anything by it - he just - wasn’t minding his tongue, and besides, anyone who resorted to knock-knock jokes kind of deserved it.

Erik nudges Kilgrave’s shoulder from behind. His list of names, of soft feminine thighs, rounded curves, the smell of their hair, of the way he _moved_ in them, disintegrates to the New York street, to the blare of horns. Kilgrave winces, the headache worse than ever. Erik says to Luke. “You can take my car to the correctional facility. It’s faster to get around town on your bike. We’ll meet at Bedford Hills, and swap vehicles again after Hope’s release, agreed?”

“The fuck you’re riding my -“

“Luke,” Jessica interrupts, eyes flickering to Kilgrave. She says to Erik, “Be _quick_ in the city.”

Unhappily, Luke slaps the keys into Erik’s waiting palm. “Don’t mess up my bike,” he warns.

Erik turns to him, watching Kilgrave carefully.  “Get on,” he orders, when the other two have departed for the car.

Sitting astride it gingerly the pressure on his groin is not too bad, until the engine kicks over. If Kilgrave says anything - then it’s said into Erik’s spine as he pulls out into the bumper-to-bumper traffic - the words stolen away by the noise. By the time they reach court, he’s in serious discomfort, the piercings are too raw for the vibration to be pleasurable and it feels like he’s bleeding again. He gasps at every pot-hole they hit, every unexpected stop. His hands are clawed on the passenger handles, refusing to touch Erik more than necessary, and he can’t think of a single distracting name to combat the rising hurt.

They park in the handicap zone, walk three flights up instead of taking the elevator to Judge Lindsay’s chambers, and breeze in. “Go on,” Erik encourages.

“Hope Schlottman,” Kilgrave snaps viciously, “we’re here to finalise her release.”

“Yes.” The judge blinks. His mild look of surprise at their unexpected entrance fades to commiseration. “Terrible pity, to take the fall for something you didn’t commit.”

 

&&

 

By the time they hit the street, an officer’s writing a parking ticket for the bike. “Handle it,” Erik murmurs, and stands further away, loitering in the background, ready to watch Kilgrave at work. He doesn’t care for the welfare of the human, but he _is_ curious to see if Kilgrave can act with some of Charles’ natural restraint. Erik’s power is already curled around the officer’s gun, ready to off-set any command Kilgrave might whisper. “Carefully.”

Kilgrave shoots him a baleful look, then wanders up to the officer, hands jammed in his jean pockets, metal cuffs visible on both wrists. Conversationally, he asks: “Tell me, are you hungry?  Even in the slightest?” Kilgrave’s eyes widen.  His hands slip free from the pockets and wave when the officer turns abruptly, hand resting on his holster. Kilgrave’s animated in a way that makes Erik smile, that reminds him of Charles. Gamely, Kilgrave continues: “There’re _wonderful_ donuts at Janice’s café, worth a treat, if you don’t my saying?”

“I _am_ hungry,” the police officer agrees, taking a long moment to think about it. “I missed my breakfast this morning, called out for a job.”

“I _know,_ ” Kilgrave enthuses. “It’s terrible not keeping regular hours, you should eat something before you fall down, right away, officer. Personally, the hot cinnamon donuts are worth recommending.”

“I’ll be sure to try them,” the officer agrees, and strolls off happily, his half-completed fine in hand.

 

&&

 

Kilgrave watches the officer's progress, keeping the mutant in the corner of his vision. Erik’s gaze is hot; the curl of want lingering in his smile makes Kilgrave shudder a breath. Hastily, he looks away and takes his seat on the wretched bike. Elizabeth, he chants, trying for calm, while a part of him realises in alarm: _he likes this, Erik actually **likes** what I can do_.

Kilgrave never wanted to be noticed. He never wanted to draw undue attention; or have a righteous cause to fight for. Kilgrave’s been content to do whatever he wanted, uncaring of the consequences, foot loose and fancy free. Let the gods, super-soldiers, heroes thrash it out in the skies above. Kilgrave had high end shopping to acquire, beautiful women to fawn over. He lived his life beholden to no one. What was so wrong with that?

In the daylight, out in the open with his mouth unstoppered, Kilgrave starts to regain confidence. He needs a better plan, where Jessica keeps her word once Hope is released. A better plan where there’s distance between Erik and himself, or better yet, a whole bloody planet. Kilgrave needs the piercings cut out (he’s already quaking at the thought, light-headed with panic); he needs someone who can heal him completely, regardless of the damage, who can regenerate cellular growth, and he happens to know a girl with the ability in question, plus her current home address thanks to Erik bandying out names like Storm. It doesn’t take a genius to be presented with ‘mutant’ ‘school’ and _not_ come up with Xavier’s College. He needs to find a girl named Miranda Mershell, aka Medusa, before Erik comes along and finds _him_ , and when he sets this plan in motion, Kilgrave needs to be absolutely certain it will work.

Jessica will keep her word, she promised: honour, mercy tendencies, hero and all that. She _swore_ on it.

On the sidewalk, Erik waits a beat then slides onto the bike in front of him. With a roar, the engine rumbles awake and they move to the next destination.

“Hope Schlottman,” Kilgrave says to legal, a twenty-minute ride later. “You should prioritise her paperwork. The judge ordered her release today.”

“Yes,” the lawyers allow. “It’s going through the proper channels as fast as we can push it.” The distance from legal to the police station where the original charges were made is only five minutes. “Hope Schlottman,” Kilgrave sighs, heavy with the foreknowledge it’s the penultimate time he’ll say the name – the correctional facility is last on their list - and watches the officer nod, his face gone keen.

Outside, the sun struggles between the clouds, cabbies blast each other with horns, and messenger bikes careen by.  The correctional facility, Kilgrave comforts himself, then all of this is over.

Erik keeps shooting sideways looks at him, half-considering, before he comes out and asks, “Do you remember last night?”

He was stabbed through the cock four times. Disbelievingly, Kilgrave stops in his tracks. “Painfully.”

“Afterward,” Erik dismisses. He looks intent, searching Kilgrave’s expression for an answer.

“I lay down,” Kilgrave grits out - fainted might be just as accurate - but he still has some measure of pride.

Erik nods.  He says distractedly, “It’s an hour’s ride to Bedford Hills Correctional Facility. You’re driving.”

“I don’t – “ Kilgrave stops. He lived in other people’s houses: he simply told them to get out for the duration, or he stayed in hotels and deleted the security footage. He ate the finest cuisine at the best restaurants, or had home-cooked meals prepared for him by total strangers. He was just as likely to hop into someone’s car and say ‘drive’ as he was to catch a cab, but the truth is, he’s never had to do _any_ of these things for himself, cook, drive, clean, be an actual tax-paying citizen, an adult.

“I’m not licensed. I mean…I haven’t before.”

Erik sits on the back of the bike. He says over his shoulder. “Doesn’t matter. Take the front seat.” When Kilgrave does, he scooches up close, hands on Kilgrave’s hips. “Grip the handlebars,” Erik instructs.  When he complies - giving the illusion of being in a driver’s pose - Erik loops the bangles around the metal bars, tying Kilgrave’s hands securely to the bike.  

“You kill people so randomly, with just a word.” Erik bumps his hips forward, shoving Kilgrave up the seat until he’s perched on the very end of it. “It’s not going to be random from now on. I have a very specific list I want you to help me with.”

There’s a thousand things Kilgrave wants to say. For the first time he feels like gagging himself, uncertain of what will antagonise Erik, what will set off his power. _Fuck you_ is such a multi-faceted phrase - he only has to last until he reaches Jessica, Kilgrave reminds himself, he just needs to make it to the prison – so struggles to keep his rejoinder civil.  " _Why_ would I help you?”

“Our people are being murdered.”

“I’m not a mutant,” Kilgrave spits.  He's the result of an experiment gone hideously wrong, his life goals had been simple up until this point, live life, have fun, win Jess back or kill her for her independence and murder his parents. He turns around to glare. "I'm a virus."  Admittedly, it sounded better in his head.

"A virus?"  Erik doesn’t look angry. He seems patient, sharp-eyed, like a hunter waiting for a trap to spring. “Someone did a number on you, child. Finding your parents, I think, has just made my list. But from now on, you don’t get to sit on the sidelines, your place is alongside me.  Fighting.” Erik reaches around: in broad daylight, in front of the police steps, he unzips Kilgrave’s jeans. "I'm _done_ giving you choices."  

Erik pulls his cock out through the fly as if he has every right, and holds it in one hand, smoothing the wrinkled skin before he lays the shaft flat, on top of the gas-tank. The rings on the underside fix fast to the metal of the bike. Numb with horror, Kilgrave says: “Are you _trying_ to draw attention?”

“Anyone sees, I’m sure you can talk your way around it.”

The engine splutters to life with a gyrating roar. Silent, Kilgrave folds double.  With his wrists tied to the handlebars, far away from his torso, he can't cup himself, or stop the vibration. The rings rattle and shake; they tug, they pull at agitated flesh.

If it was bad before, now it’s so much worse.

Kilgrave makes it ten minutes before Erik takes a speed hump - until he _accelerates -_  and then he’s at wits’ end. Fifteen minutes out of the city limits Erik rolls to a stop in front of a red light and takes the gag out of his jacket. He has it seated and reattached before the light turns green. By half an hour Kilgrave can’t think at all – he’s back in the cell, in the cold water - circled by a hungry shark. There are flashes, bright spots, when he feels something _other_ than pain, boredom-irritation-exertionoflimbsrunningupahill, but it’s fleeting, too banal, the emotions not strong enough to override his own baseline. Flying by on the bike, they race past before he can make sense of it. Before he can chase those random sensations down, and so ithurts-won’tstop-bleedingpinpricks becomes Kilgrave’s entire world. Encompassing. There’s not a single brick left standing in his own mind – his castle walls turned to rubble, the mortar smashed to dust. Desperate, Kilgrave’s searching for a way to make it _stop_.  

Twenty minutes from their destination, Erik pulls into a highway rest zone. The site features a grubby toilet-block, a parking area with no clear designations, and a scattering of shady trees. It’s plainly deserted when the bike engine cuts off. Erik waits for a moment, surveying the area, and then removes his helmet.

The effect is instantaneous.

Pinned to the gas-tank and flaccid, Kilgrave hardens in a rush – trying to match Erik’s erection.  Assaulted by lust, he’s over-run before he realises the emotion is not his own, before he can counter a defence. His body, arousal, every cell - every thought in his head - violated as his dick tries to fatten and curve upward from the tank.  He’s screaming for a different reason as the flesh catches, snagged backward by the metal bisecting him.  He’s screaming because there's nothing left.  Erik is everywhere.

 

&&

 

Birds give flight overhead, the sound of nearby traffic remains loud, the grey skies of the morning dissipating to a pale blue. Erik isn’t a monster. He lets the metal expand with the growth, loosens its harsh lines, and watches Kilgrave harden. When Erik pulls him back, heaving against Erik’s chest, Kilgrave’s eyes are open.

They’re as wild and dark as those of the ten-year-old Erik saw on film.

“Empath,” he explains softly. “Your parents lied, or deceived themselves, maybe.” You’re one of mine, remains unspoken, redundant now. Kilgrave might not have realised he was a mutant – might have hated his own kind as his parents so obviously did - but Erik knows how to wield a weapon. You do so ruthlessly, without a thought toward compassion. Erik pulled men’s teeth out.  He stabbed them through the palm with a knife.  He flung Wolverine into the ocean speared through with metal rebars and let him sink to its night-time depths. He used Rogue, Charles, any other mutant who could benefit his cause. Women might have been Kilgrave’s bread and butter - but from now on he’s _Erik’s_ – and Kilgrave doesn’t come any other way.

“Lean over the handlebars.”

Because Erik wants this, _desires this so very much,_ he’s thick and heavy between the legs, the pulse of need like a hammer in his blood. The way Kilgrave groans, the natural grace of his spine, how he shudders only spurs Erik on. Erik likes control. He likes making his control absolute. “Hold. Hold,” Erik croons and fucks him like that - the bike immobile - with Kilgrave’s chest flat on the handlebars, head hanging over the side, with his speared cock dribbling onto the gas tank and his jeans caught just under his pale ass.

Erik comes a long time later.

He comes with a savage joy, _sharing_ it, every second, every flicker of desire: the hot clutch of Kilgrave’s body, the tight grip of muscle around his prick. The pleasure sends Erik into a mindless rut, turns his vision white with ecstasy. Kilgrave, weeping, comes at the exact moment Erik does.

Erik doesn’t need to touch him. He doesn’t even look at Kilgrave’s neglected dick, heavy with metal, listing to port.  Kevin doesn’t spurt hard like he should but ejaculates messily, around the multiple obstructions, smearing his cock head with fluid and staining Luke’s bike.  “See?” Erik says. “You _liked_ it.  I made you come.”

 

 

 

“H-hope Schlottman,” Kilgrave whispers to the warden of the women’s correctional facility. His arms are crossed over his narrow chest.  It doesn’t matter how hard he hugs himself, he can’t get warm. “I’m here to pick up a discharged prisoner.”

“Her paperwork –“

“It’s coming," Kilgrave interrupts.  "It’s a done deal. No need to hold her in prison until it arrives.”

“Of course.” The warden’s face clears. “Let me just get her for you.” She walks around her desk and out of the office.

Jessica paces the room, eying them both suspiciously. “What the hell took you so long?”

“Kilgrave?” Erik prompts. “Care to reply?” The mutant’s leaning against the wall, ankles crossed loosely. Erik’s mouth curves in a dangerous smile.

Every eye in the room turns to him; stammering, Kilgrave says: “I had to clean up a mess.” 

There was a moment in the clearing after coming, _before_ Erik pulled out of his body, when Kilgrave was unable to separate the strands of their emotions, when he felt it. Watchfulness- _anticipation_ -iwanttodoitagain washed over him in a wave: tangled, Kilgrave had gone liquid hot with acquiescence. When Erik resettled the helmet on his head: blocking himself off once more, it was like a douse of icy water, or a horror show, his emotions limping away on their own (the only sensation left to him - the agony in his ass, the constant fire in his groin).  There was a dull roaring in his ears.   He can remember Jessica saying she couldn’t think when she was with him and Kilgrave can understand the predicament now.  Erik pulled him semi-upright - stooped over the bike - and in preparation for the prison took the gag from Kilgrave's mouth.  Erik rubbed a thumb over Kilgrave's lower lip, he traced the indentation lines of the strap, on Kilgrave's left cheek.  Erik tugged him back a step or two and carefully - with a gentleness that belied the last twenty-four hours - tucked Kilgrave away into his jeans.  He re-zipped the fly one tooth at a time. Blindly, Kilgrave was staring at his own bound wrists.  His grip had gone white-knuckled on the handlebars.  Hollow, he whispered: “Let me go.“ 

The pause was pregnant, heavy with consideration, before Erik moved, he readjusted his own clothing then planted a hand between Kilgrave’s shoulder-blades and pushed, bowing his torso downward. Hands still tied to either handlebar, legs straddling the bike, Kilgrave had panted, held in a stress position as his chest dipped.  Erik's voice was three shades beyond dark when he finally answered: “Lick your come off Luke’s bike, Kevin.”

Kilgrave closes his eyes, swallows hard.  There's only one person in the room he's hyperaware of, even Jessica has faded into the periphery. He -

– _ropey strings of fluid across the gas-tank_

– _his cock pierced and jerking as the ejaculation leaked out of him, slow as molasses_

_– the hurt stealing his breath away because it was too soon_

_– and Erik pushing everything at him with no division, no wall, until the sensations had blurred into one._

He came – he came when Erik did - biting his own tongue bloody with the second-hand _pleasure_.  “You liked what I did,” Erik had crooned, and wiped his finger through the evidence. “See?” As if the outcome overruled the method.

In the small office of the correctional facility, Kilgrave is leaking from his ass and all he can smell is  _sex._ Erik. It should be obvious to everyone in the room, he thinks, but neither Jessica nor Luke had looked at Kilgrave oddly.  Kaitlyn, he blocks out, Elizabeth, Kirsty, Johanna, soft curves and feminine touches, behind that he hears the echo of Erik’s voice, saying he needed Kilgrave for a mission. Every time he glances at the other man, he recalls the clearing, the bike, the maelstrom of Erik’s intent – the dark pitch of his desire - the anticipation of _I'mgonnadoitagain._  When forced to feel two powerful, and equally _relentless_ sensations, Kilgrave had focused his attention - party to his own rape - and he can't get his mind around it now.   Worse than that, Erik _knows._ He wiped his fingers through the come, he smeared it into Kilgrave's nape, he had kissed his neck hotly.   It doesn't matter how Kilgrave tries to defend himself from now on, if left to his own devices, Erik will keep escalating the hurts, until he's overwhelmed- until the preferences Kilgrave has lived by are cindered - until Erik remakes him.  He's hugging himself in the corner of the room and he can't get warm.  “Jessica – “ he says aloud.  

His voice catches, his eyes have gone hot with despair.

Jessica turns toward him but the movement’s aborted when the door swings open. Hesitantly, Hopes steps into the room. Her expression blossoms when she sees Jessica, it changes instantly from wariness to joy. She throws both arms around the other woman. “Oh god,” she says. “Oh god, _thank_ you.”

Kilgrave shrinks back, he's not ready to be confronted by Hope, to have her look at him and know.  “You don’t see me.”

Erik glances at him, guarded and hard.  He drags the gag out of his pocket and lets it unspool.  Kilgrave's heart-rate doubles at the sight, he presses into the wall. Hope smiles at Erik, Luke, and returns her attention to Jess. She ignores the left corner of the room where Kilgrave wants to hide, just for a moment, until he can collect himself again.  “It’s done? I’m free?” Hope whispers, as if she can’t believe it.

“You survived,” Jessica presses. “You’re going to survive it.  You’re no one’s victim.”

Kilgrave can’t remember seeing such an expression on Hope’s face, he certainly never paid much attention to her before, even when they were sharing a hotel bed. Luke stirs. Gently, he guides Hope out of the office and down the corridor, toward the room where personal belongings are returned. Erik jangles the bike keys then follows the other man, to exchange vehicles with Luke presumably.

They're on the third floor of the building, the small window letting in a square of dim light, and for the first time since Erik arrived there's only the two of them.  Kilgrave takes his chance and lunges.

He grabs Jessica by both arms, pulling her close. Jessica knocks one hand loose, she plants a palm in the centre of his chest and pushes Kilgrave hard against the wall. He says in a rambling rush. “We had a deal, you and I. Hope’s freedom for mine. Jessica,” he implores, and comes to a stop. He can’t compel her. Kilgrave’s known for some time that Jessica’s grown immune to his power, but Jessica hasn’t realised it yet. He can’t compel her so the only option left is to appeal to her greater sense of justice.  Jessica _stops_ men like Erik - like Kilgrave, with his long list of names that no longer calms him - she could stop it, because Jessica is a hero and her promise still _means_ something. “You gave your word, Jessica.” He takes his hands off her wrists and says urgently. “Call him off.   _Please_.”

Because in the end he can’t say it – he hates the word rape – he never could admit it aloud in his own head.  Saying as much to Jessica stops him cold because he had loved her, had tried to show her in a thousand small ways except - I made you come – has lost its lustre.

“No,” she says. The word is like a fatal punch in a fight, a fist to his sternum. “When I first took you to the cell, I made an offer which you _refused_. So I called Erik and made a different deal.  He came." She glances toward the door, where Hope had stood, where her face had been fragile with disbelief.  "Hope's free...so Erik  _kept_ his side of the bargain. ”

He doesn’t understand – it’s like she’s speaking another language - it’s like she doesn’t _listen_. “Jess, you can’t leave me with him!  You don’t know what he’s done - please, _god_ \- you don’t know what he’s going to do!”

“No one ever does,” she says, flatly. “Welcome to the human race, asshole.  Be like the rest of us, for once, and hope for the best.” She shrugs loose and takes a deliberate step back.

“I never made you scream,” he says, voice small, because it’s the truth.  Erik’s footsteps tread firmly along the hall, and Kilgrave imagines he can hear the creak of the leather gag as it swings from his hand. He never hurt her in the manner he’s been hurt. Not with such wilful intent.

“Bullshit. You never _allowed_ me to scream,” Jessica corrects, because that, too, is the truth.

He always hated loud noises.

“Luke will take his bike back, Hope and I will share a cab to the city, either way you’re not my problem. I’m keeping the promise I made to _myself_ , you understand? I don’t plan on thinking about you ever again.” She steps close to the door and hesitates. “This is me - _letting you go_.”  Jessica steps out of the entry, even as Erik steps in, filling up the space she once occupied.

Kevin flinches when Erik’s hand lands on his shoulder – shrinking in on himself at the unwanted contact – and watches all Hope stalk from the building.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh god, I'm so sorry to anyone who actually read this. Swear to god I'll never write this pairing, or in the JJ fandom again


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To be honest - this story really did end on the second chapter - but there's been a few requests here and there for a follow-up. So, er, follow up there is: 
> 
>  
> 
> Story Two  
> The Reflecting Pool
> 
> special thank you to kernezelda for her amazing eye.   
> warning this is a dark fic - with Stockholm and conditioned behaviour running rampant throughout, plus a host of other kinks, be careful before reading.

When Kilgrave wakes it’s to a raging thirst. Two water bottles are rolling around the foot-well, and a blister pack of paracetamol lies on the seat beside him.

Kilgrave cracks the seal to drink, the water sweet on his tongue. He finishes it in a few swallows and takes stock of his surroundings. The scenery outside blurs by in streaks of yellow and gold, the first hints of autumn red. The sun has moved passed its zenith. In the backseat of Erik’s car, Kilgrave is unnaturally hot, the t-shirt flush to his skin, forehead damp with sweat. It’s silent in the cabin, no radio or music to be heard, the only accompaniment the low growl of the engine.

The clock on the dash reads a quarter to four in the afternoon. Kilgrave palms two tablets and swallows them dry. He starts in on the second water bottle at a slower pace, savouring it.

In the rear view mirror, Erik meets his eyes. “How are you feeling?”

Mutely, Kilgrave shrugs. He can’t distinguish the individual hurts from one another; it’s just a mass of discomfit. He doesn’t want to answer, to provide Erik with more of himself than what’s been taken; to Kilgrave’s inner ear, the query isn’t formed by concern. Kilgrave’s been dry-fucked twice in twenty-four hours - prepared once by fingers and tongue, the second time with nothing but Erik’s girth stretching him wide – he _hurts_.

Erik concentrates on the road. “The piercings shouldn’t have been touched for almost a month.”

His cheeks smart with the humiliation of it. “Whose fault was that?!”

“Yours. You should have done what I said.”

“Taken your word I was a mutant?”

“Well,” Erik reasons. “Now you know.”

Disbelievingly, Kilgrave stares at him. Whatever forces pushed him into foreign sensation last night, the catalyst is now absent. That’s good, that’s perfectly fine. Empath, Erik had explained – and Kilgrave wants nothing to do with it. He doesn’t need it. Kilgrave studies the back of Erik’s neck, the demarcation where helmet rim meets soft vertebrae, and thinks about plunging an ice pick into his spine.

It’s been four hours since Hope’s release from the prison; since Jessica Jones handed him over like he was sodding livestock. He takes a short breath, it feels like there’s a tight band across his chest.

A police motorcycle blurs down the road on the opposite side, lights flashing, siren on, parting cars like the Red Sea.

Kilgrave forces himself to talk. “My real power is only effective within yelling distance,” he offers. Kilgrave bites the rest of the sentence off – _I’m barely worth your time_ – because there’s playing yourself down and then there’s disgracing yourself. Kilgrave suspects Erik’s on the alert for any manipulations, and going in heavy-handed this early won’t help. As starters go it’s simple: more importantly, it’s the _truth_.

Kilgrave would have devoured his first born if it could have improved his range – if it allowed him to be effective through P.A’s, microphones, or telephone lines. If he could have regained control over Jessica with stem research he would have handed himself over to science gladly.

Now, he’d risk it all to be rid of one person.

The car accelerates, engine roaring as Erik overtakes a slow Hyundai in the right lane. A golden retriever sits in the passenger seat, ears flapping wildly in the wind as they hurtle by.

“Your range is better?” Kilgrave tries. He lets his eyes widen in envy, his tone gilded by awe. The terror, unfortunately, isn’t something he has to fake. “How can you tell one piece of metal from the next?”

Does it have to be in sensing range? Erik’s eye-line or hearing? Does Erik have to ‘see’ it in order to affect it? Kilgrave has four rings of hell embedded in his flesh, and Erik said he could distinguish the repurposed bullet from any other kind of metal floating around.

He threatened he could find Kilgrave anywhere. The idea of it is terrifying. Or it’s the type of lie one might tell - to appear terrifying. Kilgrave hadn’t exactly been forthright with Jessica in the past, either.

What he needs is solid intelligence. How far does Erik’s ability run? How far away does Kilgrave need to be, to be out from under his thumb? Where’s the safe zone? A kilometre? Two? From the front seat of the car, Erik sounds amused. “Why don’t you try _escaping_ and find out?”

Learning patience, Kilgrave fumes, is a fucking bitch.

Kilgrave squirms on the seat, ass sore, dried spunk on his inner thighs. He tries to keep his mind ticking over – if he doesn’t think, he’ll panic, and Kilgrave did enough of that at the prison, begging, debasing himself while Jessica stood by. Kilgrave _hates_ her. Unequivocally. For the lies told; for the false promise, for bringing Erik into this game when it was between _them_ first (with insurance on Kilgrave’s side: Hope’s imprisonment, Malcolm’s drug addiction, a station full of police officers with their guns held to their heads, the serving staff – _go_ _look for my present, Jessica, I’ll give you the choice_ ), but Jessica brought Erik into it mid-skirmish, and now he’s pinned – Erik’s focus magnetised on him.

The rage is enough to galvanise, to try to push past the foggy undercurrent of unmitigated horror. He can’t fight Erik unless he knows the basics, and waiting for an opportunity to present itself is not something Kilgrave’s accustomed to.

“You’re subtle as a brick,” Erik says, sotto voce.

“Asking outright normally works for me.”

“Then maybe you should consider this: it took me less than an hour and a half to tear those shields apart last night. Do you want to take me on again so soon?”

“Castle wall,” Kilgrave corrects tonelessly, and stares out at the passing scenery.

It’s how he always thought of it – but mortar doesn’t stand against steel – and the trick of it, whatever he did when he was a kid to block people out, Kilgrave isn’t certain how to restart. His head is throbbing. “Tell me about your list.”

 

&&

 

Erik pulls into a fast food joint when the light starts to fade, the sky a painters palette of rose pinks dipped with mauve; the car park is semi-full, ravens pecking haphazardly at discarded trash, short hops and flutters taking them from one soggy French fry to another. Erik’s eyes are filled with grit, his stomach rumbling incessantly.

Inside, McDonald’s is crowded.

High school kids in sloppy uniforms commandeer one section of the restaurant while small families and individuals take up seats in the rest. It smells greasy and cheap, the overhead lighting a harsh buzz. The background noise is echoes from the tiled floors, amplified by the tiled walls, until it’s a deafening rumble. Erik waits in line, Kilgrave hunched beside him.

Erik orders off the menu and grabs two super-size cups from the refill station.

He tops them both to the brim with ice and water, and navigates through the semi-chaos. They find a seat in the centre of the restaurant. Kilgrave looks pained, as if McDonald’s is an insult to cuisine in general and his personal tastes in particular; Erik’s at the point where he doesn’t care, so long as it’s edible. He pushes one overly sized Slurpee cup onto Kilgrave’s side of the table and motions for him to sit.

Erik pokes at his fries, over-cooked and limp. He asks with a frown: “Where was this castle?”

“What?”

Erik chews thoughtfully. Kilgrave’s perched precariously on the plastic seat, as if resting his weight on both ass-cheeks hurt, or as if the rough inseam of denim is scraping his under-rings. He hasn’t touched his food. Erik rips open three sachets of salt from the condiments tray. “The facility you grew up in, was there a castle nearby?”

Kilgrave looks blank. “No? I didn’t exactly hang around afterward.”

“No. You managed to escape,” Erik concedes. In all, Erik counted thirteen children on the video last night - their screams rebounding in the wet cell as he tore Kilgrave open - thirteen _mutant_ children. Erik can’t help wonder what Albert and Louise Thompson were actually _doing_.

Deliberately, Erik tips the salt packets into his water. “It didn’t occur to you to help the other mutants when you left?”

Resentment blazes in Kilgrave’s eyes. “What did they ever do for me?”

Erik stirs the salt, dissolving it. The ice cubes bang and clatter against the brim. He contemplates the other man, eyelids gone heavy. Erik had come down on Kilgrave like a tonne of bricks last night; working on Jessica’s time-schedule, twenty-four hours to force Kilgrave’s hand - Erik had been savagely brutal. The after-effects are plain: Kilgrave flinches if Erik comes too near, focused on Erik to the exclusion of everybody else in the restaurant. He's braced for an attack, and that, is an exhausting way to live.

Kilgrave’s eyes keep dropping, watching the empty salt packets as Erik shreds the paper between his fingertips.

If there weren’t other considerations at work, Erik would have gentled his approach last night, taken his time. Ideally, Erik would have preferred that Miranda hadn’t been needed. It’s the only regret he holds. There’s a delicate trick to bringing someone to heel – and Erik wants Kilgrave pried open, a mirror darkly - not without teeth for others. They came to McDonald’s for a reason, but Erik can’t tell if the other man’s discomfit is physical or if the withered empathy, choked off and under-developed, is making its presence known. “Sit on the edge of the table. Drop your jeans,” Erik says, shortly.

In the middle of the restaurant, Kilgrave recoils as if physically slapped.

“I won’t hurt you, but the rings need to be bathed in salt, three times a day for a fortnight.” Longer in actuality, but Erik knows he won’t abstain for a month. Staring at the wide mouth of the giant cup, Kilgrave blanches.

“I’ll use the bathroom.”

“You’ll do it right here.” There’s an elderly couple beside them, the restaurant half full with the afternoon crowd. Kilgrave’s fingertips have gone white on the tabletop. Erik shreds another salt packet and reiterates. “I won’t hurt you unless forced, but you and I need to establish some guidelines, and those piercings have to be bathed.”

“Then take them _out_ ,” Kilgrave urges, voice gone raspy with the plea. “You have the manacles, Erik; you don’t need them.” He turns his wrists over for emphasis, rattling the table. His face keen with earnestness – it’s the first time he’s addressed Erik by name, intimately, voice pitched low to avoid attention - and Erik straightens.

“We’re catching a flight to Scotland first thing tomorrow. The manacles will be removed at the airport but the bullet stays where it is.” Erik folds his arms and repeats. “Take your jeans off… Or do you need me to count it down?” Five seconds, he could say, before you make me touch you.

Kilgrave’s eyes flicker, from the cup over-filled with ice to the diners conversing in the restaurant.

This is a man who made Jessica kill for a USB – the last remaining evidence of his existence - the tape which played over and over in the cell last night; along with instructing Hope not to see him at the prison - it’s become perfectly clear to Erik that he doesn’t enjoy being noticed.

Calmly, Erik waits. The crowd around them jostles and laughs, conversations ebb. Kilgrave’s expression alters. He’s trying to reassemble himself, the leftover tatters, but the events of last night are still too raw. In vivid detail, he knows the _exact_ nature of Erik’s temper - and it’s set against his own instinct to remain unseen.

“Can I speak?” Kilgrave grates out, bitingly.

Face impassive, Erik nods. He let the matter of Hope drop as a matter of good will, but if Kilgrave spoke out of turn in the restaurant Erik would have disciplined him in a heartbeat. Kilgrave is starting to _think_ , coming out of his shock faster than Erik could have imagined, which is where things become treacherous between them. Tricky. Erik touches the manacles, lets them tighten on Kilgrave’s limbs as a warning.

Kilgrave falters, then declares loudly: “Don’t see, don’t hear anything! Quiet!”

The conversations patter off. Erik looks around the restaurant, at one blind person sitting next to another.

“Position yourself in front of me.” Kilgrave’s hands curl inward, turning into loose fists. Erik catches his eye. “These are the rules: you do what I say when I say it. You don’t speak in public unless instructed. Don’t lie to me, ever. Follow these simple guidelines and I won’t hurt you unless necessary. In return, unlike your parents, I will explain what I’m doing and _why_ I’m doing it.” Erik lets his teeth show. He’s aware of how it looks, too many in a row to make people comfortable. “I won’t leave out a single detail; not when I’m making you scream - or come - not when I’m directing you in a fight. But you need to start _listening_ to me, Kevin, because I don’t want to be forced to use Miranda again so soon.” Kilgrave’s breathing faster, defiance slipping as Erik’s words strike home.

“What’s this then, if not a punishment?” Kilgrave looks at the ice in the cup.

“After-care.”

“Salt water’s meant to be warm, you prick.”

“I’ll be sure to remember that next time.” He picks up the brimming cup. Condensation beads on the side, runs down the plastic in rivulets, a perfect water-ring marring the surface of the table where it had sat. Waiting patiently, Erik runs his finger through the liquid circle, breaking the perfection.

“How long?”

“Five minutes.”

Reluctantly, Kilgrave stands. He glances once at the people surrounding them before he scrubs the back of his hair, agitated and rough, making it spike in all directions. Erik spreads his thighs in invitation, making room, until Kilgrave shuffles around and places himself in front, propped against the table. Eyelashes lowered, he drops his jeans to the bare minimum.

This close, he smells rank: like stress and dried sex.

The ring at the root of Kilgrave’s dick is sorely inflamed. The motorbike – the natural angle of Kilgrave’s body – meant it would have had the widest gap, the largest stretch between anatomy and machine, and been subjected to the deepest vibration. Erik doesn’t touch any of the piercings, but he guides the mouth of the cup around Kilgrave’s cock, then submerges the entire length of him, slamming the plastic rim hard against his root and covering most of the perineum too. Kilgrave hisses. He blinks rapidly at the ceiling. Erik waits a beat, then stuffs Kilgrave’s balls inside too, clunking against the ice as the contents redistribute. Displaced water sloshes over the brim. Erik checks his watch. “Your mother said you were sick in the recording?”

“D-degenerative disease. They said they cured it.” The first shiver courses through him. Kilgrave’s voice breaks when he asks, alarmed: “What about – w-hat –“

“The metal?” Erik finishes, not unkindly. “Swelling wider than the D-rings allow is more your problem, when everything digs in against the nerve endings and the penetrative bar becomes too short for the growth - but if shrinkage starts to hurt, let me know.”

“It hurts,” Kilgrave says, irritably.

Erik leans in, forehead against his belly, and expels hot air against the black t-shirt. Startled, Kilgrave holds utterly still. In the back of the restaurant, it smells like something is starting to burn.

“You manifested from a childhood illness?” Erik ponders. He jiggles the cup, shakes the salt and ice around. Kilgrave stutters out a breath as the contents knock, swirl around him. Dubiously, Erik says: “So the other children on tape, they all had the exact same disease as you? Is that what your parents said?”

“No? _I don’t know!_ Christ, it’s not like they ever explained anything to me!” Kilgrave’s face twists. He bites his lip to keep his teeth from chattering. “Erik, I can get you money. Honestly. I can walk into a bank and make you the richest man on the planet if that’s what you want. _Think_ about it. You can hire a thousand P.I.’s to hunt these people down. Just – _this_ – “ He makes a vague motion, as if ‘this’ encompasses Erik and Kilgrave both, the metal impaled in him – “Isn’t necessary. I can set you up for life. You won’t _need_ me after that.”

Zero interest in financial gain is one thing they do have in common.

Erik tries hard not to laugh in his face.

“You think I’m incapable of opening a bank vault? Floating all the silver and gold to me until I’m richer than Tony Stark? You haven’t really thought through the extent of my power, have you?” Affronted, Kilgrave’s expression falls, the brief flare of hope shuttering off. For Erik, it's personal, finding the creators behind the contagion; making them pay for it, is _personal._ Kilgrave plants both palms on the table, readying his hips to twist away. “Don’t move.”

Kilgrave’s stomach flattens at the tone. His elbows unlock, hips dipping. In the cup, the water swells to the brim again as he sinks. Silent, he shivers on the edge of the table until Erik’s five minutes tick into eight. Until the tremors are evident in his thighs, stomach, and arms. Erik keeps the cup pressed against him until the rattle of ice can’t be heard, until the smell of smoke is in danger of offsetting the sprinkler alarm. When Erik finally overturns the cup, water splashes against the floor, and Kilgrave’s lips have tinged blue.

Erik suspects the few people who knew of Kilgrave’s gift initially thought of him as a private genie – I want people to give me money. I want to win every trial. I want the jury to be prejudiced in my favour. I want divorce papers signed – until the moment they realised Kilgrave didn’t give a flying shit about their wants, their wants could take a dive off a very large cliff, as far as he was concerned.

What Erik wants is simple. “I need the truth. No misdirection. At Hope’s release, you said ‘Don’t see me.’”

Both Hope Schlottman _and_ Luke Cage turned their gazes away, ignoring the corner where Kilgrave had stood but Jessica hadn’t, and Erik found the discrepancy fascinating. Watchful for any wrong-doing, he'd picked up on it instantly, observing later from outside in the corridor later to see what would happen. “I left you alone with Jessica, a woman with power. Why didn't you order Ms. Jones to attack, before I came back in?”

Kilgrave doesn’t answer straight away – as if nothing good could derive from it - his brows draw inward. “And risk your anger?” he decides.

“You’re risking it right now,” Erik replies bluntly. “Is she immune?”

The hesitation is still there. Kilgrave admits under his breath. “After the bus-crash – after she killed Reva – something kicked in.”

“Jessica hadn’t realised?”

“She's a little slow sometimes. Besides, I’m an extremely good actor, and when I want, careful, with my choice of words.”

Amused, Erik leans backward. “She could have killed you in a heartbeat.”

“Not with Hope… I had leverage. Had being the operative word, until you came along.”

“Ah,” Erik says, smiling. “Plus a high tolerance for pain.”

Kilgrave closes his eyes briefly. "Not high enough."

“Different beats,” Erik consoles, and lets the cup fall.

Haltingly, Kilgrave pulls his jeans up. When he turns his face away, Erik catches his expression - poorly hidden - hate shining like a refracted prism from his eyes. It might be less than a week before he bucks, Erik muses. He had branded Kilgrave a coward and he is, Erik knows he is, it’s why Erik’s going to win this battle long-term – but out of the fourteen mutants in the facility, _he_ was the one to break free of it. Erik wouldn’t call him intact, exactly, but he came away from a childhood that would have left most empaths babbling, forever ruined.

Kilgrave had come away from his parents deeply segmented. In a roundabout manner – and for an empath - he had come away from the facility _fighting._ "Speak. Unless you want this place to burn to the ground, and take care of the security camera.”

At the exit, after wiping the tape, Kilgrave scrubs a hand across his face, the stubble grown dark on his cheeks, and says aloud. “Continue on.” Blinking like owls, the diners open their eyes at once.

 

&&

 

_I am going to kill you._

He said it in Jessica's cell in New York city, declared it aloud. _I am going to kill you._ But Kilgrave won’t unless Erik loosens his grip; until the mutant relaxes his hold, even by a fraction, he’s stuck.

Kilgrave showers in a one-bed hotel room close to the airport. It’s the first time he’s had the luxury in almost two days, the water cascading on his tense shoulders. He smells sour, heady with an invasive scent. He scrubs his hair with soap: torso, legs, arms – pulls the manacles to check the skin on either side – but there are no ligature marks around his wrists. Miranda’s doing, he supposes, after the suspension.

More hesitant when it comes to his groin, he knows enough not to soap the rings, to let salt bathing, passing urine, do their work – when he presses a finger behind himself, probing carefully, the rim feels puffy, abused. He’s sore, but there’s no blood evident, no tearing Kilgrave can feel. Light-headed, he sways, trying to find wiggle-room inside a plan that’s grown increasingly desperate.

_I am going to kill you._

Kilgrave washes again, slower, between his toes and fingers, behind his knees. He’s going back for a third pass when Erik unlocks the bathroom door and strides in. Kilgrave has the water off and is halfway out the shower stall when Erik pushes him back a solid step.

A touch hysterically, he says: “Do you shower with that thing on?”

“No. Nor do I sleep with it on.” Erik has the gag in hand, his smile gone lazy. “Sleeping with the helmet gives me a _terrible_ crick in my neck.”

“My condolences.” Kilgrave stares at the harness swinging from Erik’s hand: prised open, his jaw will be in agony after an hour; he’ll spend the night sleepless, again. He’s been free of the gag for most of the afternoon and he thought…Kilgrave doesn’t know what he thought, but he had _hoped_ it was the last he'd see of it. He shakes his head and says, as if it’s a flying endorsement. “Jessica used duct tape!”

He won’t promise to remain silent if Erik takes the helmet off – they both know it’s a bold lie – and negotiating gags, apparently, is what his life has been reduced to. The hysteria, Kilgrave notes, hasn’t quite left yet.

“Don’t carry it with me.”

“A handkerchief then?”

“I could pierce you. Tongue stud. Lip ring. You could sleep with your words held still.”

Kilgrave shuts his mouth. Hastily, he snatches the gag. His heart thuds, once, loud and cavernous in its chamber.

Erik’s eyes have gone dark, watching Kilgrave’s bottom lip. He reaches out, as if to brush the pad of his thumb across it.

“You said you wouldn’t hurt me,” Kilgrave explodes, and jerks his head backward. He’d feel ashamed at how plaintive he sounds except all he wants is for the consideration to fade. Erik sharpens at the rejection, or the tone of voice; the manacles bite into Kilgrave's wrists as both of his hands are wrenched behind his spine. Erik will do it, he knows; the idea’s already taken form. He doesn’t need Erik’s helmet gone to read the desire, black as oil, floating quickly to the surface. Pulse tripping, Kilgrave reminds. “You said ‘not unless I made you.’ You _promised._ ” Please, if Jessica had no intention of keeping her word, if Kilgrave’s unable to keep his own vow, then he needs Erik to be steady in this. Someone has to be honest.

He can feel the panic clawing up his chest – flashes of the previous night, when the embedded sound had shifted and changed, are visceral as the moment it happened - like an asthma attack his lungs are heaving but there’s not enough air. This, he thinks angrily, _this_ is what trips him over.

Erik refocuses. “It won’t be as intense. It won’t hurt. Not as much as last night.”

_It doesn’t matter._ The idea of it is making him curl up inside. His back is to the shower stall and the light in the room seems to be winnowing, edged out by a creeping blackness.

Swiftly, Erik steps close.

He tilts into Kilgrave, presses against him from pelvis to torso. Mouth hot, his tongue is clever, sinuously mobile. The edges of his faceplate cut into Kilgrave’s cheeks. Erik’s kisses are unpredictable. He runs the gamut from inquiry to demanding insistence; he lays siege as if he has ninety years of experience to draw upon. His weight is real, more solid than the swirling memories inside Kilgrave’s head. Erik traces a hand down his forearm, follows the inward curve around Kilgrave’s spine, until he can tuck his fingertips into the wrist manacles at the small of his back. Erik kisses him quiet.

Enfolded, Kilgrave breathes when Erik does. “Hush,” Erik murmurs, and his touch gentles, Kilgrave softening with him; he sags, slumped against the shower tiles. _Don’t do this to me_ ; Kilgrave chokes down, because intellectually he knows what living in a heightened state of fear does to a person. At the rest stop, Kilgrave saw exactly what Erik planned – empath - like the worst kind of cosmic joke. There’s a part of him already in-sync. Attuned - imprinted when he broke - Kilgrave can’t see beyond Erik because he looms so large.

He shivers. He breathes in when Erik does, exhales when Erik allows him. Tentative, Kilgrave kisses back.

He has a plan, but it involves giving away chunks of himself until Erik relaxes. He has the worst fucking plan in the entirety of mankind. He wonders if Jessica felt like this – if he had managed a fraction of Erik’s malevolence – probably, he can concede, but he feels like a blundering idiot in comparison, trying to out-manoeuvre a man who has taken Kilgrave to school when it comes to manipulation.

“You’re thinking again,” Erik says. He takes his mouth away, lips swollen, wet. His thigh presses firmly between Kilgrave’s legs.

He’s calmed; the memory of last night’s piercing shunted aside for other concerns. Physically, Erik is easy to focus on, and that’s the heart of the problem: it’s what Erik _wants_. Kilgrave licks his bottom lip; he can taste the other man on his tongue, sharp with iron, thick as blood. The helmet is a steel gate between them. Uncertain, Kilgrave shifts his hips, the relief palpable when he finds no evidence of want.

Erik’s eyes narrow. “I’m not fucking you. I’m tired. I’ve been awake for three days, and unlike you, I didn’t nap in the car. I won’t pierce your tongue unless it’s forced. But I’m putting the gag _in_ so I can rest.”

They share the bed. Erik tosses the helmet off as soon as it’s safe to do so. His hair is plastered to his skull, cowlicks at the back making it stand on end. The colouration appears more red than brown, his eyes pale blue; Erik rolls into bed sleepily, half-dressed, and doesn’t say another word. Naked, Kilgrave sleeps on his stomach, hands flexing in their cuffs, mouth pried open. He turns his head to watch the time tick by on the bedroom drawer.

He had told Hope to lie utterly still. He had chosen her because of her looks, age, the way she screamed ‘virgin/victim’ with her simpering eyes. Hope wasn’t half as alluring as Jess, had none of her fight, but she pulled forth Jessica’s protective instincts – the wannabe hero thing - it was Hope who had stopped Jessica from running away, who had stopped her dead in her tracks.

He had whispered orders in Hope’s ear, and by the time Kilgrave left, she was staring at the bedside clock.

If Jessica found her in ten hours’ time, if she had the _audacity_ to rescue Hope, then his order had been simple: _at the happy reunion, kill your parents._ It was an open and shut case as far as the police were concerned – the murder occurred in the elevator to Jessica’s office, the act caught on CCTV. Hope would have served life in prison for the double homicide – and _Jessica_ would have learned not to touch Kilgrave’s things.

Watch the clock, he had said.

He wonders how long it will take to work through Erik’s list. If he doesn’t escape soon, how much of him will be left? The worst case scenario is they find everyone responsible for the contagion before Kilgrave wiggles free. If he outlives his usefulness, what will Erik do then? What instructions did Jessica whisper in his ear? _Kill him_ , Kilgrave imagines. It’s the only outcome Jessica would have consented to. _You’re gonna have to kill him when it’s done._ He can hear those words in her flat New York tones, he can practically hear Jessica speaking them.

Wide awake, Kilgrave watches the clock.

 

&&

 

At the airport, they are the very picture of civility.

They buy their tickets at the counter – _you can use the previous credit card number,_ Kilgrave yawns - and shrugs when the man at the counter explains only cattle-class is available.

"Sir, your helmet?" Erik looks over his shoulder at the security checkpoint. In line, directly behind, Kilgrave tilts his head. "He’s the family idiot, a safety helmet, you see, to stop concussion,” Kilgrave fixes Erik with a look, and smiles thinly. “Lord knows, if he took it off he’d walk straight into an airplane propeller. You should let him pass." Studiously, he looks at the ground to avoid Erik’s reaction.

When Kilgrave follows, he _feels_ Erik’s reaction - on the opposite side of customs – the mutant reminds him pleasantly, “Don’t speak to anyone,” and tightens all four rings until it feels like piano wire digging into his cock. Kilgrave hunches, winded, as if a fist has been jammed into his gut. He sets off the metal detector the second he steps through it.

Kilgrave stands mute, swearing an inner monologue, as the customs agent says: “Keys, wallet, pen, any metal on you, sir?” and waves the wand over his body diligently. The agent stops his search low and looks upward dubiously: “Sir? I asked a question.”

Eyes fixed on Erik, Kilgrave bites his tongue bloody to remain quiet.

“Sir?” The impatience starts to ebb through. “Right: I need you to step aside into this room for me. Now, sir.”

Erik turns side-on as he studies the flight times on the board, his tone darkly humorous. “Tell them your idiot cousin needs to come. I can’t be left unattended now, can I?”

“Can I speak?” Kilgrave asks, as an aside, when they are both in the customs office.

“No. I think they should _see,_ don’t you? Maybe they should check my luggage, play the media card from the cell…they could watch you ride my dick. They could watch you _squirm_ on it.”

“Sir,” the customs agent says, re-approaching. “We’re going to need you to undress.”

He’s wearing latex gloves, face inscrutable; his shoulders are a solid wall.

 

&&

 

They’re evicted from the room twenty minutes later.

Kilgrave’s clothes are dishevelled, his face is burning hot, and he’s choking on fury – having explained to customs that he had a few kinks, that the rings, while numerous, were benign - while the customs officer physically stumbled in shock. _Jesus, where's the...? How’d they even get in?!_

Erik bumps his shoulder, faux companionably: “I trust we’re done playing games?”

On the plane, Kilgrave hands over his economy ticket and tells two businessmen they’re in the wrong seats. Erik throws his duffel in the overhead storage. The men take the walk into economy, where the screaming children, infants, and chairs with no available leg space reside. Kilgrave takes the aisle position and steadily tries to get drunk for the remainder of the flight.

Indifferent, Erik pays him no mind, the faintest of smiles on his mouth.


	4. Chapter 4

In Glasgow it’s pissing rain, a torrent of water that buckets down until the surrounding buildings are a mere suggestion. Kilgrave’s not entirely sober post-flight, but he’s not wandering into a Scottish flood dressed as Luke Cage. The knowledge that Jessica’s found someone - is happy with someone - is riling enough without being forced to wear the man’s clothing, or freeze his bollocks off while doing it.

Inside the terminal the shops are stocked with the normal tourist trappings: plush toys of the Loch Ness monster, whiskey, the clan tartans of Scotland in kilts, scarves, and a variety of mini-skirts. Tech gadgets, clothing stores, and alcohol dot the corridor.

Tired travellers zip by, hauling their carry-on luggage behind them, or wander aimlessly from store to store.

Kilgrave wore three-piece suits from Savile Row in greys, blues, and purples, the ties a flamboyant slash of colour. He drifts, eyes drawn by the fine threads and soft silks he’s accustomed to. When he spies the vest on the mannequin - dove-tail grey – paraded in the window of Brauer’s, he angles toward it. It’s the type of clothing he’s comfortable in – but the metal buckle at the small of the back makes his stride falter mid-step. Kilgrave passes by. Hands jammed into his jean pockets, he keeps going, head lowered. He opts for an Abercrombie and Fitch store instead.

He’s quick. Erik’s monitoring every move he makes.

Kilgrave grabs a couple of long-sleeve thermals - plain white, free of any logos - a t-shirt, pull-over hoodie, tracksuit pants from the sports section and lots, lots of underwear. Commando doesn’t agree with the piercings, or any type of friction for that matter.

He ducks into the change-room. The door doesn’t shut when he attempts to push it closed and when Kilgrave hazards a look upward Erik loiters against the opposite wall.

Dumping Luke’s clothes, Kilgrave skims one of the thermals over his torso; after a brief consideration, he pulls the t-shirt over the top for extra warmth and finishes the ensemble with the grey hoodie. Kilgrave’s eyeing the tracksuit pants when Erik stalks near, his mouth thin with disapproval.

“No. Jeans only.”

The top half of Kilgrave is zipper free, no buttons, buckles, studs, no metal near his torso. He grimaces and sets about finding a new pair of jeans, firm enough so a belt isn’t required, trying to minimize Erik’s options for further torment. He’s never been keen on jewellery; thank god, no necklaces or rings on his fingers. Save for the steel ladder Erik made of his cock he’s always avoided bling.

Kilgrave sorts through the jeans while wondering if Velcro is a respectable option in clothing attire. He’s never wanted to own a pair of tracksuit pants so desperately in his life. He doesn’t recognise himself when he’s done – the three-day stubble on his cheeks has grown full and dark - if clothing makes the man, he just lost ten years in a single wardrobe change.

In hoodie and jeans, Kilgrave looks like a pale, postgraduate zombie.

Erik has his greatcoat folded over one forearm, black duffel over his shoulder. His profile is clean-shaven, immaculate, he draws the eye of every female in proximity; and a fair share of the males too; for all of his masculine grace no one approaches; Erik radiates _Fuck Off_ like it’s written on his person.

In attire, they couldn’t be as different from each other if they had tried: harassed dismay versus glacial control.

Kilgrave has a quick word with the shop assistant, a quick word with customs; he has a quick word with a surveillance agent, then they leave the airport without a single surviving record of their arrival.

The same modus operandi they used in their departure from New York.

 

 

 

 

 

In the next three weeks, they work out a system. Kilgrave does what he’s told and Erik doesn’t touch him.

After the ice-cup incident, Kilgrave tended the piercings personally, diligently salting them in water three times a day until the exit wounds gave the appearance of healing.

Erik’s hunt for Charles’ killer resumes – at Stranraer, a year after Erik decimated the facility and killed everyone on site. Kilgrave is reduced to knocking door to door around the neighbourhood, until they stumble across an elderly woman whose son worked the Friday Lunch food van.

As beginnings go, it’s incongruous.  

It starts the ball rolling.

Samuel Evans did the factory route in Stranraer’s northern suburbs – delivering meat pies and offering pre-cut sandwiches to the working masses – personally he never stepped foot inside the facility, got no further than the car-park where he’d set up shop for trade, but he’d chat with Janet McKillock, who was pretty and bought her lunch from him every Friday.

Posted outside at the entry gate, Janet worked security. She was rostered for dayshift on the night Erik attacked, and had come to work the following morning to see the devastation of ground zero, as if a bomb had detonated, laying the facility to waste.

Sam shrugs when Kilgrave asks for her current address – when the building was destroyed, Sam explains, the entire place closed down – the surviving scientists re-zoned, the employees vanishing without a trace.

Sam has a picture of her, though, on his phone.

He admits, shyly, he’d been sweet on Janet – and displays a young woman with auburn hair, an impish grin. In the photo, she’s taking a mammoth bite out of a meat pie with tomato sauce on the lip of the pastry. It’s on the tip of her nose, it’s dribbling down her chin. In the photo, Janet’s eyes are two black lines, squeezed shut; she’s laughing into the camera.

In the afternoon, Kilgrave visits the federal police, and asks a senior constable to run the image through facial recognition. He comes back with the same photo, same face, under a different alias. Janet McKillock lives under the name Margaret Westchester, located in the Bridge of Dee.

 

&&

 

“Teach me how to drive,” Kilgrave says, offhandedly. He has his knee braced against the dashboard, slouched in the passenger seat as they make the five hour journey on the M77, north-bound.

Suspicious, Erik gives him the eye: “Why? You’re over forty, you haven’t bothered to learn yet.”

“To give you a break, but more importantly, to stop me from going mad. It gives me something to focus on.” He looks over once, mouth twisted in a wry smile. “Never too late to learn, right?”

It provides him with a means for escape, Erik assumes, which is why he’s really asking.

Erik weighs his options. If Kilgrave does escape he’s just as likely to coerce someone to drive him, so not teaching him stick-shift won’t hinder the process any, he’ll make his getaway regardless. On the plus side, it keeps Kilgrave’s hands in plain view and allows Erik a break from the monotony of the road. If it doesn’t matter one way or another - Erik’s inclined to teach him. Bemused, he pulls over on the highway, and advises Kilgrave on the ABCs of stick-shift.

Kilgrave bunny-hops from first to second, almost leaves the transmission behind clanging into third – where the hell is it, he mutters – he heckles a Volkswagen that tailgates him, but after that, settles into driving with remarkable aplomb. He’s a quick study, Erik notes, and feels impatience stir deep within.

They find Janet McKillock at home. She takes one look at Erik and frowns, her tone quizzical: “Do I know you? You seem familiar…?”

Unlike Sam Evans, Erik does not let Janet McKillock go.

She talks to Kilgrave calmly. Janet answers every question posed with a thoughtful consideration, and in the process, gives up three more names. Co-workers who weren’t posted at the gate entry, but walked the facility, none of whom were present the night Erik attacked – Peter Farret, Nigel Hickory, and Paul Sanders – all alive and well. The only survivors left standing had been off-shift the night that Erik, ninety-years old and on the verge of a heart-attack, had attacked. Erik opted to take everyone with him, and left himself without a single lead in the process. Erik hadn’t thought he’d survive the night.

Kilgrave talks to Janet with a false interest, his conversation peppered with “Re-eaally?’s” and “How about that’s?” He doesn’t give a damn about Erik’s list of parroted questions, but Janet is pretty, more so in person, and Kilgrave watches her with overt consideration.  

Erik is merciful. He kills her quick.

Their system works - when it’s going smoothly it works like a charm – it’s when things start to chafe that it becomes problematic.

Kilgrave does what he’s told in the daylight hours, and in the daylight hours, Erik stands so close a coin couldn’t slot between them. Tripping over Erik’s toes, always within two feet of him, Kilgrave starts to bristle like an electrified cat, unaccustomed to sharing his personal space for such extended stretches of time. Out of the corner of his eye, he watches Erik constantly.

Erik, on high alert for any whisper, any sign of duplicity, wants the tongue stud like a dying man wants water.

The gag isn’t practical in a public setting, it draws too much attention, and Erik finds himself hyper-vigilant, trying to guard against the inevitable. If Kilgrave was pierced at lip and tongue, Erik could shut him down with a thought, control every word that left his mouth, _when_ it left his mouth - it would make things so much easier between them. It would give Erik complete control over Kilgrave’s power, make it _his_. If Kilgrave would just say yes they could both relax. But Kilgrave won’t heed it and Erik refuses to go back on his promise - so he practically sits on Kilgrave during the day, always one step behind - waiting for an excuse to punish him. _Go on,_ Erik thinks viciously, _try your hand_. **_Do_** _something_. Obstinately, Kilgrave does exactly as he’s told and nothing more. The hasty escape attempt at the cell, Erik fumes, might have taught Kilgrave better; he’s biding his time, refusing to provoke Erik until then.

The biggest issue between them is simple: they’re both waiting for the other to fuck up, and it’s driving them insane.

Nigel Hickory gives up the name of his direct supervisor in security – Guy Laret – who resides in York. They criss-cross from Scotland into England, bodies left behind in their wake like pinheads on a bloody map.

Mr. Laret, as part of his daily activities, would consult with the surveillance department, he gives up two more names while chatting to Kilgrave eagerly – and they make the hop from one division of Stranco into the next. Erik likens it to walking an English maze, outer to inner, circling and circling, moving closer to the object at the hidden centre.

They’re wiping out the ground troops, the support, the nobodies - soon it will be the science department, tech, research - soon it will be whatever shadow government issued the order in the first place.

“Could Charles block?” Kilgrave asks absently, a few days later. His eyes are fixed on the road; his forefinger beats a rapid tattoo against the steering wheel.

Kilgrave left third gear lying somewhere beyond, abandoned like a road victim, and Erik has winced with every gear change since. He wants to pat the sides of the car, sooth the transmission with promises to drive next. At Charles’ name, Erik, opens one eye. “Any telepath worth their salt could block.”

“And he taught…mutants…how to?”

“You no longer think of yourself as a virus? You’re not controlling everyone by sneezing germs?”

“Oh, sod off,” Kilgrave says, pleasantly. “Did he teach you?”

“Yes.”

Charles pulled forth the memory of Erik’s _mother,_ he played it like a movie-reel, so vibrant and immediately alive. Erik relied on hate to access his power until Charles showed him a different path. Loving, cherished, bittersweet - it was _Charles_ who introduced him to the notion - the sting of long-held pain could motivate just as effectively as hate. It hurt seeing the memory come to life, it left Erik in tears, even as he could rejoice in it. Pain and love - or pain and pleasure - two opposing fractions to be used simultaneously; Erik took the lesson to heart. He doubts Charles intended it to be re-developed in such a manner - but they never did agree on tactics.

“Blocks aren’t my thing and there’s no one left to teach you those tricks but I can do what Charles did for _me_. I can teach you how to focus.”  

He says it without inflection, without any hint of what that might entail.

Kilgrave takes his eye of the road. He scrutinizes Erik, then with the faintest of sneers, says. “No. I don’t think so.”

 

 

 

At night, their system is simple – the gag goes in, the helmet comes off – instantly, without any form of delay. It’s the first thing Erik does. He’s searching for a sense of _otherness_ , something he’s been bereft of since the motor-bike. It’s another thing that’s starting to chafe.

There’s a weird alchemy at work when Erik’s hunt – stalled for a year – picks up velocity with Kilgrave’s compulsion at the helm – while the plan Erik set in motion at the cell has bogged into a quagmire.

Erik can’t break his word – he won’t hurt Kilgrave until necessary – later, Kilgrave’s belief in Erik’s word will become crucial, a deciding factor; he won’t jeopardise that play in the short term. The truth is, there’s a delicate trick to bringing someone to heel and it requires a _tedious_ amount of patience.

They start hunting from the moment they land in Scotland, but Erik gives three weeks for the piercings to outwardly heal, for Kilgrave to relax, become comfortable in the routine Erik has established so purposefully – then he starts to carve - flaying off layers to touch the skeletal frame beneath.

 

&&

 

 

Daniel Mathers is the first employee from Stranco Incorporated to recognise Erik Lehnsherr as the ninety-year old Magneto. His eyes boggle. He pisses his pants before Kilgrave has a chance to tell him to relax.

Kilgrave would sympathise, if he weren’t so worried about his shoes.

He side-steps the puddle neatly. “Stay still, Daniel.”

Daniel moans, the whites of his eyes showing. Other than listen, Erik doesn’t participate in the interrogations, doesn’t join in until the end, but he paces like an apex predator when Daniel sways on his feet. “You know me?”

“Fucking murderer,” Daniel hiccups. There’s a type of reckless abandonment found in moments like these – they either beg for their lives or spit. Or sometimes piss and spit – but Kilgrave isn’t judging.

“Your kind deserved it. CHX-1 worked. It’s going to work again. They’ll _mutate_ it,” he sneers, turning the word into a mockery. “It won’t be telepaths next time! You’ll see!”

“CHX-1?” Kilgrave interrupts, smoothly. Beside him, Erik is a line of bristling hostility.

“Designation for the contagion – Charles Xavier fell first – we had to target him first. Christ, with Cerebro, he could have touched everyone on the entire planet!”

Metal stretches out from the walls, curved like fish-hooks, Erik steps forward. Kilgrave slams a palm against his chest. “Kill him before I’m done questioning him and you lose your lead, Erik, _again_.”

Erik’s eyes bore into Daniel.

Kilgrave assumes it’s because they’re both distracted that Erik doesn’t sense it.

The first bullet _pings_ off the edge of his helmet and ricochets wildly.

Inhumanly fast, Erik throws himself left. Startled, Kilgrave drops behind Daniel, the closest human shield available.

Three more bullets pepper the ground, erratic, coming from a different angle. The aim is bad - the shooter won’t succeed by talent, but by fluke - but he’s moving, changing position. Impatiently, Kilgrave throws a glance toward Erik, who doesn’t do anything. Erik hunches, searching the dark recesses of the building. Low to the ground, Erik pivots on his heel. The metal around him has turned knife-jagged, sharp as javelins.

When the next bullet clips Daniel in the thigh - dangerously close to Kilgrave’s _face_ \- he gives up on waiting for Erik to do his normal homicidal thing, and hollers. “Stop firing! Put the gun under your chin! Put a bullet in your mouth!”

There’s a single shot. A body topples from the upper railing. It swan-dives over the edge in a mist of blood.

Kilgrave leaves Daniel where he is and jogs over.

There’s no features to speak of, no actual head left on the neck. The shooter’s dressed in attire Kilgrave had wanted to be in, tracksuit pants, t-shirts, no metal anywhere. On the floor, his gun lies in shards, shattered from the impact. _Oh_ , Kilgrave thinks. Infuriatingly, he’s more dim-witted than Jessica.

Inadvertently, he might have saved Erik’s life.

Fuming, Kilgrave squats. Balanced on his toes, his fingers poke through the debris of the gun – homemade - until he finds a bullet in the clip, cast from polyethylene, maybe.  He could use a shank, prison style - knife Erik through the ribs and strike upward. He won’t sense it coming. If Kilgrave were quick and struck the heart, Erik could be dead before he knew what happened. If he were quick. Blindingly quick.  

Three weeks have passed since the prison cell and Kilgrave hasn’t put a foot wrong - Erik can’t keep it up forever – everyone relaxes eventually. It’s impossible to stay alert long-term. Thoughtfully, Kilgrave dusts his hands off and rises from his crouch.

Erik’s hand, at his throat, slams him against the wall before Kilgrave finishes turning. His feet tangle. His shoulder crashes halfway through the plaster.

Erik squeezes. Their faces inches apart, he emanates the black fury demonstrated at the cell. Kilgrave scrabbles at Erik’s grip - his trachea pushed shut - oxygen cut off as the blood pounds through his body.

The room is buzzing with metal, elevated mid-air. On the opposite side, Daniel is slumping.

Kilgrave gets his forearm up and slams it over Erik’s arms, hard enough to dislodge his grip. Bewildered, he wheezes. “What?!”

“Where did he come from?!”

“You think _I_ did it? When did I have the chance?   You’re always breathing down my neck!”

“You’re an empath! Why didn’t you sense him!”

Outraged, Kilgrave hollers: “I’m not a very good one!”  

He’s frightened, and furious that he’s frightened, he’d forgotten the intensity, the absolute terror of Erik’s rages. His heart is racing, and he can feel the nail-on-blackboard pain as the rings shift, twisting with the added tempo of blood. He’s grown distended, and hates this trap of cause and effect.

He concentrates on slowing his pulse-rate, glaring daggers at the other man. “Get off me! I’ve gotten you twenty-six names, you ingot. I saved your life!”

“No. You did not,” Erik snarls.

Alright, maybe he was saving his own life but the point stands, life-saving was done. Kilgrave edges around. Erik turns his head, more dangerous than he’s been in weeks.

Daniel, Kilgrave thinks, in a rage, just undid three _trying_ weeks of hard bloody work. “Who’s the splatter?”

Daniel’s weeping; he’s still in position, blood running freely from his leg wound. “Jeremy, my assistant… After Stranraer he thought Magneto might return. God, we ran, we hid so well.” He looks at Kilgrave aimlessly. “How’d you find us?”

_Tell me about CHX-1. Who designed it? Who worked on the project with you? Give me a list of names of all surviving co-workers, and their addresses, write it down if necessary. Were you aware of the ultimate result of CHX-1? Who gave the order to release it worldwide? Tell me, Daniel, do you have any last regrets?_

“Only that the disease didn’t kill every last one of you,” Daniel confesses.

Erik flays him alive, hands and feet first, three strips from his back, curling the skin away from his ribs one peel at a time. Daniel hangs suspended, wearing the same manacles Kilgrave had once worn - before the airport - wearing Kilgrave’s gag.

Kilgrave sits on a science bench, banging his heels against the sideboard as he stares out at the window. Outside, the wind blusters through the autumn leaves. He flinches every so often, like a distant echo.

“Did you feel that?” Erik asks, when he’s finished wiping the blood from his arms.

No, Kilgrave did not feel that, no person in their right mind would want to feel that – Erik sounds unmoored - Charles Xavier’s death, whoever the man had been to him, had had a questionable effect on Erik’s mental health.

Kilgrave knows he should be quiet in these moments, to not draw Erik’s attention but... He glances once at the body dangling from its raw wrists, and says instead. “I want a different gag.”

 

 

&&

 

Three weeks and he’s a little too comfortable, Erik decides. Three weeks is long enough. “Jump in the shower.”

Kilgrave doesn’t balk. Erik’s made him shower and sleep naked since the day they met. Kilgrave partially turns; he has the hoodie over his head, the t-shirt riding up with it. Kilgrave’s toed his runners off, hopping haphazardly in his socks, when Erik adds, “Don’t turn the water on.”

The run-down hotel Erik chose has a two-in-one shower/bath combo.

The establishment is thirty years old, if a day, and in sore need of renovations. Yellow stains ring the drain of the ceramic bath, the rest of it tilts toward an off-white cream. The metal shower pipe is fixed into the wall at two points, the showerhead circular and wide.

It’s set at a good height for two men standing over six foot.  

The privacy screen is a simple rod with rings attached, a plastic curtain hanging from it. Erik’s always hated shower curtains - clammy and wet - how a gentle breeze could shift it, gluing the plastic to his skin. Erik hates the contact, the feel of it; it has more in common with a death shroud.

He doesn’t watch as Kilgrave finishes undressing – he knows the body. What little muscle definition Kilgrave has comes from zero body fat rather than any attempt to bulk up. There’s a small smattering of hair across his chest and in a thin line down his belly. A treasure map highlighting south.

Kilgrave folds his clothes, places them on the vanity, he steps over the edge of the bath and stands loosely under the showerhead, watching Erik.

Erik’s recalls the quiet consideration on his face when Kilgrave saw Jeremy’s firearm.

Erik searches the other man’s clothing thoroughly; from pockets to inseams, he feels for any bulges in the lining, materials that could be used to harm.   Erik’s done it every night. It’s the reason why he insists Kilgrave shower after the day’s activities – why he sleeps naked at night - but it’s the first time Erik’s conducted the search in plain view.

A muscle in Kilgrave’s jaw leaps. Bored, he looks away.

Satisfied there’s no plastic, Erik drops Kilgrave’s clothing into his duffel and locks it. It’s only four P.M, nearly dusk outside. “You did well today. It should come with a reward.”    

“Nah,” Kilgrave draws the word out, stretches it like taffy, mendaciously sweet as Erik leans against the vanity. “For me, saving your life is reward enough.”

“I might use titanium, when I pierce your tart tongue.”

“I haven’t done anything, except bring you names.” Kilgrave points out. “It’s all you wanted from me.”

_Not exactly,_ Erik thinks, frustrated.

He pushes away from the basin and enters the living room. The wardrobe is to the left of the bed. Erik opens it and finds two standard hotel bathrobes hanging in the corner, complimentary flip-flops beneath. Erik strips the terry-cloth belts free from the bathrobes.   He closes the curtains to their room then breaks the draw cord off, snapping it from the pulley. Erik wraps the thin cord around his fist, then returns.

“I’m going out to buy a new gag, as requested.” And himself a new shirt; Erik’s fast running out of acceptable clothing. He displays the cloth belts. “Since you don’t want to use the same gag as Daniel, turn around; open your mouth.”

Kilgrave’s expression flickers, relief evident; he turns to face the wall.

It’s the first time metal hasn’t been shoved between his teeth in weeks; it’s the first time Erik has been out of his sight. He must be thinking his odds have increased. He must be thinking this could be a chance to escape. Erik knows he prefers the softer options – duct tape - materials Erik _can’t_ control, as if it’s safer.

There’s no harm in disabusing Kilgrave of the fallacy. Erik prefers metal, yes, but he can work in a number of mediums.

Erik gags him with three turns of the terry-cloth belt, before tying it off and letting the remaining material drop over Kilgrave’s spine.

“This isn’t a punishment, it’s just to keep you still. I’ll return before it becomes intolerable.”

Erik knows the district. Their hotel is centrally located, and everything needed is literally within walking distance, including a shop called Eagle Leather, in an alley two streets away.

“Interlock your fingers behind your back.”

In the Hellfire club, circa 1983, Erik had the good fortune to meet Shia Tarrow. She used kinbaku, miles and miles of hemp at her disposal. Her rope-work was intricately beautiful – she’d leave patterns that could last for hours, where the rope had moulded to muscle and cut in, where limbs were manipulated into impossible angles and the body was a paean, an artistry of her expression. She was kind to some of her subjects, crueller to most. People would stagger away from Shia with dragon-scales imprinted on their skin. Erik never learned, but he could appreciate the beauty of it – the premeditation behind every applied knot.

What he does here is simple.

Kilgrave interlocks his fingers, making an inverted triangle from shoulders to clasped hands.

Erik ties the second belt around his wrists, tight, then continues to wrap - from the first knot above his hands - to the last knot, placed high above his elbows. Each coil above the join is brutally tight; Kilgrave can’t flex or bend his elbows. It pulls his shoulders back.

His torso, mildly arched, becomes over-pronounced.

Erik places both hands on his collarbones, and forces Kilgrave down, into the tub. “Stay upright on your knees.”

Kilgrave goes reluctantly. He has to turn around in the tub, no longer facing the wall, but staring at the metal pipe of the shower-stand.

Erik lets the cord from the curtain dangle free.  

“It’s called a strappado, crude at the moment, and an irritation for the shoulders.” Erik loops the cord through the lowest knot at Kilgrave’s wrists, resting below the small of his back - then hoists the cord upward, dragging the strappado with it.

Kilgrave bows forward at the waist, groaning, as his wrists are forced higher than his shoulders, as his lungs are compressed in a forward tuck.

Erik raises the height of the cord until he’s an inch away from forcing a shoulder dislocation, then ties it around the shower pipe.

There’s no slack. It’s taut from bound wrist to steel pipe. Forced by the strappado, Kilgrave’s stuck in a low bow, staring at the discoloured drain. The sides of his thighs are flush against the tub.

“Of course, when I’m out the door there’s nothing stopping you from standing up, turning around, taking the pressure off your shoulders.”

Kilgrave turns his head side-on, confusion in his eyes as he watches Erik moves away. Erik collects his keys, wallet; he closes the blinds in the bathroom. The draw-cord in the bathroom is stainless steel; small ball bearings attached to the pulley, common in wet zones the world over.  It separates itself; it coils into Erik’s waiting hand.

“Except you are going to stay still, while I fetch your reward.”

Erik kneels beside the bathtub. He threads the chain through all four of Kilgrave’s cock-rings, from tip to root, under and over, and fashions it into a crude leash.

Bowing, Kilgrave doesn’t watch, eyes shut. He flinches at the slight jerks, the cool rattle of steel on steel, at Erik’s impersonal touches against his flesh. Erik lets the chain dangle to the bathtub, where it melts into the drain-hole, the line taut as the rigging on a ship.

Like the cord around the strappado, there’s no slack, all four rings are sloped downward, a hairsbreadth from tugging at the flesh.

“Open your eyes, mirror darkly.”

Kilgrave does.

There’s nowhere to look except at the leash between his legs.

“This is an easy example of predicament bondage, or otherwise known as, do not move from the position I place you in.” Kilgrave’s wrists are pulled up high - his arms are a straight line - shoulders subjected to a vicious burn. His cock is tugged low and forward - a snap-line -straight to the drain.

“You try to stand, take the pressure off your shoulders, you’ll tear the rings out of your cock. If you try to drop your hips, put some slack into the leash, you’ll dislocate your shoulders. If you stay here, exactly here, as I placed you, you’ll be fine.” Erik checks the gag again.

Three lengths are coiled inside Kilgrave’s mouth, but the remainder dangles between his shoulder blades.

The last knot Erik hitches, involves the gag.

He pulls the leftover terry cloth backward, dragging Kilgrave’s head up, up, up, until he’s blinking at the showerhead. Kilgrave swallows convulsively. Erik hitches the first terry cloth belt to the second terry cloth belt, he ties it to the strappado, making a third direct line: from gag to the knot placed above Kilgrave’s elbows.  

Shoulders pulled back, cock tugged forward. Torso crushed inward, head yanked upward. A contortionist’s zigzag.

On his knees, balanced precariously between all four points, Kilgrave vibrates with the tension. And the leash between his legs, the gag digging into his mouth, the belt around his wrists; they all vibrate too. Gasping, he stills, trying to force motionlessness.

Erik knows how to work with more than just metal: he’s a taskmaster of a vintage kind, and this isn’t a punishment unless Kilgrave actually moves. He touches Kilgrave’s cheek, where the stubble has grown into a near beard and orders. “Shave that off tomorrow. I’ll be back soon.” The last thing Erik does is turn the shower on.

 

 

&&

 

The first week after they parted from sweet, fucking Jessica, and returned to his infernal country of birth, Kilgrave didn’t sleep. The constant gags made it difficult and the discomfit could keep him awake. He’s adjusted now, or become accustomed to the feel of it, of his mouth being made into a hole…ominous in its wideness.

Kilgrave catches sleep whenever he can. He’s certain psychiatrists would have a word to describe it, but knowing what’s happening doesn’t make fighting it easier.

The second week after Jessica - his dreams were filled with images he’d rather not relive - he woke up thrashing, startled Erik. The second time, Kilgrave knew better, and held himself rigidly still.

But it’s been three weeks now and he hasn’t dreamt about the cell in days. His dreams have become obscure, harder to recall in the morning. He knows he’s young, recognises the Seine, the river-barges moored to the piers and the cobbles under his feet. In reality it had been a warm Parisian night, the lights of the city reflected from the dark water; it had been a French accent in his ear, the meaty weight of a hand curling around his nape – _Combien pour la nuit, ma cherie?_ – but when Kilgrave growls, “Oh, go screw yourself,” he doesn’t remember the fog being so dense, the groan of metal, or the chains rising from the Seine, swaying like river-snakes. He doesn’t remember _Erik_ being there, but the fear in his eyes, oh, God, that’s something Kilgrave could _live_ for.

Go screw yourself.

He thinks there’s a trick to surviving extended captivity, and it involves turning into a ball of furious rage. Jessica was the living embodiment of it – at least from his perspective. Kilgrave felt maligned at her temper, when he’d been nothing but civil to her. In truth, he’s still confused at Jessica’s reaction –but he’s certainly trying to emulate it.

In the bathtub, furious, Kilgrave holds absolutely still.

Face tilted upward, the spray hits Kilgrave’s eyes, the heat is humid in his nose, soaking the gag. He can’t see anything. Blind, his sense of ‘position’ is precarious. He swallows around the drops, which trickle by the gag. Outside, there’s the bang of a car door shutting, feet rattling on the staircase as they run up to the second level. He catches the faint whiff of something fragrant, Thai or Vietnamese, and he’s hungry, starving, hasn’t eaten since morning. Kilgrave is yearning for _real_ food. Not fast or cheap but home-cooked, with time and effort put into it.

Today, Daniel Mathers gave up the name of a junior scientist. Erik’s search has moved one step inward, and Kilgrave is on a shortening clock. He pushes his tongue against the gag, wiggles his fingers. His shoulders burn.

Five minutes later there’s another car door. Someone whistles cheerfully. Kilgrave vocalises, or tries to, over the sound of the shower and the drops of water leaking around the gag. He chokes, swallows convulsively, and vocalises again, more insistent.

The whistler keeps walking. He enters the room beside theirs, slams the door so hard the plaster rattles. He turns the water on in the kitchen - as if to make a cup of tea - and the television roars to life with the five o’clock news.

Kilgrave flails backward as the shower goes scalding, the cold water redirected to the neighbour’s room.

The leash on his cock _yanks_ and he howls, dropping his hips down until his shoulders flare white with agony. Unbalanced, blind with the spray, he seesaws between _tug_ and _pull_ , overshooting his mark. His knees slip inward. The water returns to soothing as the neighbour turns off his tap, as he flips the channel from five o’clock news to sports. Moaning, Kilgrave slows his movements, trying to find the position Erik set him in.

Heart thumping wildly, he manages it after a beat. He’s fine until a toilet flushes, until more and more occupants trickle home, and then it’s rinse and repeat.

Erik keeps his word. He’s back before the shower runs cold, and when he unties the strappado, loosens the belts, he has a new metal gag in hand. Smaller in size, closer to a horse’s bit and less in common with a ball. He touches the sore at the corner of Kilgrave’s mouth, where the older gag cut into him, with exploratory fingers.

“You’re going to ask me to pierce you soon.”

Kilgrave jerks away – gags can be cut, as Hogarth had proved, a gag can give him his voice back when it’s removed – if he only has two options, Kilgrave’s not giving it up until he’s free. He’s not taking a tongue piercing for all the tea in China.

Erik leaves him in the bathtub with his new reward shoved between his teeth, and the leash still fixed to his rings.

 

&&

 

Kilgrave’s quieter the next morning.

When Erik first opens the bathroom door he finds Kilgrave squashed at the very end of the tub, wrapped up in towels for warmth, with the lead so short - between rings and drain - it had been impossible to lie down. He’d had the choice of either staying on his knees, facing the showerhead, or sleeping with both legs dangling over the edge of the tub, braced against the side to keep from sliding unexpectedly in the night.

Back against the wall, butt over the drain, he looks at Erik with blurry exhaustion.

“You’re making breakfast,” Erik says. “If you don’t approve of fast food, cook it yourself.”

Subdued, Kilgrave makes breakfast under Erik’s direction, using the supplies he bought last night. Naked and gagged, Kilgrave’s stomach rumbles intermittently. He mixes the eggs and cheese, the milk together, standing shoulder to shoulder with Erik. He listens to the quiet instructions Erik sets forth: “Dice mushroom, baby spinach, tomatoes and ham” – attentively. Previously, Kilgrave always had someone do it for him, and Erik starts by teaching the basics.

Deliberately, Erik will do half of everything with Kilgrave.

Erik showers while the meal is cooking, quick and perfunctory. The doors are locked, windows sealed, he can feel the exact number of knives in the drawer. Erik left Kilgrave’s leash coiled around the steel handle of a kitchen cupboard, and he runs his mind over the rings, monitoring their position. He left instructions to flip the omelette when ready.

Kilgrave is standing beside the counter, his expression terribly bleak, when Erik emerges dressed, with the helmet on, in less than five minutes.

Erik runs a paranoid eye over him, bare skin, no place to hide weapons, and lets the gag dismantle, the duffel bag unzip. It’s a bump to their routine – the leash – and Erik removes it while holding Kilgrave’s eye. He lets the chain rattle away, its use discarded.

“I hope Daniel didn’t give you ideas, last night.” Erik is being _restrained_ here, with every interaction they have, he’s taking the utmost care.

“No.” Kilgrave goes for the bag, pulling on his jeans and thermals.

Clothed, they sit down to eat.

Kilgrave starts hesitantly then digs in with gusto, his entire attention fixed on the meal. The omelette’s golden and fluffy – marred only by the instant coffee. Erik takes a lingering sip. They’re on their way to Nottingham, to find a scientist named Leila Reynolds, but yesterday’s incident has shoved Erik’s priorities around.

“You’re going to start practicing empathy from now on. One hour, once a day. I need an advantage if they’re not wearing metal, or at least a heads-up to their arrival.” Erik’s been a strategist and a general; he doesn’t have many weak-spots, but he knows how to shore them up. In a one-on-one fight, he’s the most dangerous mutant alive. Kilgrave chokes on his omelette. Calmly, Erik adds: “I’ll teach you.”

“I haven’t done anything wrong. I didn’t do anything wrong last night.”

“It’s not a punishment. You need to learn how to use it, and that won’t happen without practice.”

“At your say-so?” Kilgrave berates. “I don’t want it, I’m pretty sure I blocked it out for a reason!  It only works when you…” He breaks off suddenly, his face twisted into a snarl. “You know what - your promises are worth shit!”

“I won’t touch you. Not until you ask.”

Kilgrave’s face goes hot, a hectic flush rising from collarbones to cheek. “Do you listen to yourself – you had me leashed!   Could Miranda not fix your soddin’ insanity too?” He pushes away from the kitchen table, bins his half-eaten omelette, and pulls the hoodie over his head in agitated jerks.

Erik snatches the car-keys before Kilgrave can grab them. It’s a fair question, he supposes.

“In Miranda’s defence - mid-thirties were not my most stable period.”

 

 

 

They don’t find Leila Reynolds in Nottingham: like a couple of others, she’s changed her name, possibly made adjustments to her appearance.

Kilgrave spends a large bout of the afternoon on the internet, hunting down records until he finds a photograph of Leila, from a high-school marathon competition. He prints it out, studying the image carefully.

There’s something about the way Kilgrave looked at the photograph - about the speculation when he looked at Janet McKillock, in Scotland - that needs to be corrected. Leila Reynolds is dark-haired, pale-skinned, Erik can see the resemblance to Jessica if he squints, or maybe Hope, with her love for athletics.

They leave a police ‘snitch’ running background checks on the name, uploading Leila Reynolds’ photograph to the system to try to match her to prior records. Kilgrave tells the officer to work on it for as long as possible, and Erik calls it a day at five. Unless she has a police history it’s a long shot, but it’s worked previously.

They’re returning to the car when Erik offers: “I had two teachers, Klaus Schmidt and Charles Xavier. Schmidt taught me to access my power, when it was intermitted.”

“You weren’t always a finely controlled freak?”

“I was a prisoner inside a Nazi concentration camp; I was with Schmidt for months.” Erik smiles without humour, and opens the car door. “It would flash on and off; I could bend a gate one day, but couldn’t shunt a coin across a table the next. I could go entire weeks without feeling it, or being able to reach it. Schmidt found a catalyst that worked.” His voice goes ominous. It’s an old pain, the ways in which Erik started out. “And Charles - Charles taught me to focus. I took these lessons to heart. I carry them. I can be either of those things for you.”

Over the top of the car roof, Kilgrave’s eyes narrow. “And Schmidt’s catalyst?”

“He killed someone I loved - like the scientists we’re chasing.” He paid for it.

“Then we have a problem,” Kilgrave says bluntly. He drops into the passenger seat and slams the door, rattling the framework. “I have it on good authority I don’t love anyone.”

_Nobody but yourself,_ Erik agrees.

Erik enters the traffic and turns the nose of the car around, pulling a U-turn as he heads in the opposite direction to the hotel. Presently, he reminds: “One hour a day. How many women have you had?”

“What?” Startled, Kilgrave says: “I don’t know.”

“Are you lying?”

“I don’t remember,” Kilgrave bites out. “I lost count.”

He’s still pissy about the leash, Erik decides. He takes his eye off the road and fixes Kilgrave with a gimblet stare. “Strolling down the street with one woman on each arm? That’s how Jessica described you – voracious.”

With the first hint of unease, Kilgrave changes the topic. “We should keep working on Leila, we might find her yet, and if she hands over a name or two, we can keep going. Erik, if you need a rest, I’ll drive the night.”

Erik changes it back. “What did you say to them?”

“It doesn’t - “

“Answer the question.”

He’s breathing slow and steady, Erik notes, controlled, with a fine veneer of calm. “I told her to like me.” Kilgrave looks at him, eyes dark.

Erik slows the car, cruising the streets until he finds a woman loitering on a street corner. She sashays over in high-heels when Erik unwinds the window, a bright smear of lipstick on her face, her dress ribbed-blue.

“Hey, boys,” she greets, her voice whiskey and honey.

Erik looks her over. “I’ll pay you three times the going rate, for an hour of your service.”

“Three times? Why so generous?” There’s lipstick stuck on one tooth, her hair mousy brown, she’s a pro, experienced enough to be wary of unexpected bonuses.

“Nothing out of the ordinary,” Erik assures. “Just standard practices.”

“One or both?”

“One.” Clipped, Erik dismisses her outright. “You’re not my kind.”

“Here?”

“I have a destination.”

“Five times the going rate if I’m not on safe ground,” she haggles, tight with suspicion. “And I want half of it upfront.”

Unperturbed, Erik nods. “You’ll get the money.” When Erik starts driving out of the city, toward the surrounding forest, her hackles go up. She gets louder, rambunctious. “Kilgrave,” Erik urges, softly.

“You’re safe,” Kilgrave says, with a hitch in his voice. In the twilight he’s starting to look anxious, washed out, he cranes his neck around to calm her. “You’re safe.”

“I’m safe,” she agrees, and relaxes into the back seat, staring out the window. “I’m saving up. I’m getting me a real job...” Uninhibited, she starts chatting about nail polish, beauty courses, a corner shop, voice drifting from topic to topic.

Kilgrave’s hands are on his thighs, squeezing rhythmically.   The hooker stares out the window as the sun goes down, the ambient light of the city a distant memory.

When Erik pulls over, the surrounding forest is pitch black. The headlights cut a beam over a dirt road, turning the landscape alien. The trees stir above, the engine of the car ticks over quietly.

Erik gets out.   He walks around to the passenger door and opens it, waiting, until Kilgrave slides out of the vehicle. The woman tumbles from the back seat, straightening her dress. “Give me a minute,” Erik murmurs to her; to Kilgrave he instructs. “Sit on the bonnet.”

Erik studies the night sky, stretching out with his senses, feeling for metal moving. If there are people; then they’re miles away from here. His shoes crunch as he meanders around to the boot and opens it. Erik takes the manacles from his bag, two bottles of water, and slams it shut. He hasn’t used the restraints on Kilgrave since America.  

Kilgrave is sitting tensely on the edge of the car, both hands braced against the bonnet. Erik fastens one restraint to each wrist, clamping them to the metal. He unbuttons Kilgrave’s jeans – knuckles brushing against his belly – lowers the zip, and slides the denim to Kilgrave’s ankles, hobbling the material around his boot.

Done, Erik sits with him, side by side on the bonnet.

The metal’s still warm from the engine. Kilgrave hasn’t said a word. His mouth is slightly parted, his breath mists with each exhalation.

“’I want you to like me’ is not what you said to Jessica.” Not to a lot of girls, Erik suspects.

“I was ten the first time I said it,” Kilgrave defends. “She gave me a purple pencil, to help colour in her book…it was enough.”

“And the next time?”

Their voices are quiet in the dark, intimate. Kilgrave’s head is lowered. “The next time I was curious.”

Erik motions the hooker over. “Tell me the truth, what did you say to Jessica?”

“I told her ‘you want me,’ I told her ‘desire me,” Kilgrave whispers, barely audible. “I didn’t _hurt_ her.”

Fuck me, suck me, open for me, Erik can imagine. “Say it to her,” Erik suggests, and nods at the hooker.

Hands planted on either side of his hips, Kilgrave twists his midriff. “I don’t. Erik, I don’t want sex. Not now, not with anyone.”

“You don’t speak unless I say so, you don’t lie, and you do what I say, they were the rules, yes? Are you disobeying? Are you letting me pierce your tongue?”

Erik leans in, sharing body heat, close enough to kiss. He searches the other man’s eyes. Kilgrave inches away a fraction. His breath expels in the air, drifting upward like a curl of smoke; to the hooker, he says tightly. “You want me.” From three feet away, her eyes dilate.  She’s looking at Kilgrave’s bare thighs, his tangled boots. She’s looking at his cock curled tight and small against his legs, the rings hidden.

“I won’t hurt you,” Erik reiterates. “But tell _her_ to suck you – for one hour, the way you used to like it.”

Erik barely hears it, when Kilgrave echoes the words. Erik grabs the gag from his pocket, inserts it into Kilgrave’s mouth and locks it tight. The last order Kilgrave spoke, final.

She moves forward like a gothic nightmare.

Erik shifts away from the bonnet, even as the woman goes in, fast. He gave Kilgrave three weeks to recover; last night, he provided a sharp reminder of who was in control. Erik doesn’t need to be here for this part. He walks into the forest aimlessly, part of his mind monitoring the metal nearby. He thinks, privately - on some level - Erik gave those three weeks to himself, to build up to it.

He had sixty years with Charles, thirty years of unrivalled enmity and thirty years of rocky friendship. Charles’ compassion, his capacity for forgiveness was as alien as his gift. _Charles_ was alien – and he became more so the older he lived - Erik never could reconcile it in his mind. Charles was the most frightening, powerful, mutant Erik had encountered; yet he refused to employ it. They had fought like demons for decades. The rare times Charles had trapped Erik without the helmet only cemented the absoluteness of his control.

At age ninety, Erik knew without a doubt when Charles was inside him, Charles voice, Charles’ presence, weaving like a song.

In hindsight Erik thinks it might have been deliberate – a hark to the day they met – bobbing in a choppy ocean while Charles whispered: “You are not alone.” Charles had enough finesse, he had enough talent in his ability to remain unnoticed, if he was riding Erik’s thoughts, _allowing_ Erik to know he was there was an alien concept of kindness.

You’re never alone, my friend.

With Charles transparent, Erik had known for a fact it was the truth.

In the sixties, Charles terrified him; the helmet was Erik’s sovereignty – wearing it was worth the betrayal that welled in Charles eyes, the hurt, too. Erik spent thirty years of his life deliberately blocking Charles, afraid he’d find a way to stop Erik, or talk him out of it.

He had thirty years of enmity, thirty years of friendship, and when he put the helmet away, let it collect dust, Charles was still with Erik, waiting, his presence a familiar song – I’m here, let yourself trust, you’re not alone. They achieved an irritable peace together.

Then the _otherness_ – Charles’ steadfast presence, the _promise_ he made in the ocean - fell silent. All the telepaths fell silent.

Erik had been void until the cell.

He walks slowly, feet dragging against the leaves, ducking the occasional branch and low hanging foliage. Erik skids down a short embankment. Scum water, collected nearby, is dank and pungent in his nose.

He stops when he’s far enough away he can’t hear them. Mosquitoes whine. Erik lazily slaps at his forearm.

Above, the night is clear and frigid, the stars numerous. He can see Cassiopeia, Perseus and Draco, the constellations his mother taught. Erik drags a lighter out of his hip pocket, a crumbled packet of cigarettes from another, and lights up. He inhales with a low tar tobacco content that tastes nothing like the 1960s.

Erik misses those harsh flavours. He misses rolling his own smokes under his thumb. He gave up the habit in his forties. The crumpled packet in his hand had belonged to Daniel.  

When Erik fed the sound into Kilgrave’s cock, he hadn’t known if it would work, despite Miranda’s assertion of a secondary gift. Until he pierced the other man, until Kilgrave flooded into him, Erik hadn’t been certain.  

Kilgrave didn’t have the finesse, training, or the _skill_ to hide his presence. He over-ran the empty space; he made himself known.

Erik’s been thinking about this for three weeks, and he can admit, there’s a certain amount of trepidation that stirs with the idea.

Kilgrave is so much lesser than Charles, but his fits and starts, his quicksilver turns, is a language Erik can understand. He’s not pure of motive or untouchable in his conviction. Kilgrave came to Erik pre-muddied, amoral, for Erik’s benefit.

Erik finds a tree to lean against, helmet scraping against the bark as he stares upward, Auriga and Lynx shining above. He lowers his jeans a fraction, just under his ass. Erik starts to jerk off; efficiently, mildly detached, the pleasure low in his stomach. He twists his thumb over the cockhead, tightens his fingers on the length. He pumps himself without any thought toward drawn out pleasure. He doesn’t conjure the faces of the people he’s lost, or loved. He doesn’t think about anything. Lost under the vastness of the constellations; it’s mechanical, and quick, the pleasure punched out of him. It’s about making sure he comes – here - while the helmet is on. Erik is ninety years old going on thirty-five, he’s neither a horny teenager nor a woman - capable of multiple orgasms - Erik’s not going to get hard anytime soon after this.   He’s _relying_ on his refractory period.

Erik will need it when he returns to the bonnet.

 

 

 

 

 

It’s half an hour before he emerges from the dark, eyes fixed on the ground, the headlights shining like twin beacons.

Erik doesn’t let himself see it – just flashes of peripheral awareness – a dark head bobbing swiftly between Kilgrave’s legs. The wet noises, she makes, the soft slurping. Kilgrave’s spread out over the bonnet, filthy as a flesh magazine. She has both hands on Kilgrave’s hips, keeping his lower half pinned. The only other sound in the clearing is Kilgrave’s: muffled.

Erik approaches, wraps both arms around her shoulders, and drags the woman off. Mouth open, the hooker pushes to return, searching for Kilgrave, surprisingly strong as she struggles against Erik’s grip. Kilgrave twists to the side. One arm is flung behind him, clamped to the bonnet; loosely he curls his legs upward, until his boots are off the ground.

Bodily, Erik has to wrestle the woman around the car. He shoves her through the back door and locks the vehicle, sealing her inside. Her hands scrabble at the glass; she bangs the window with the flat of her palm.

Erik backs away. He grabs the undone jeans by the crotch and jerks Kilgrave’s legs straight, flipping him onto his back again.

Each ring has acted as a bottleneck, the copper tight as a piano wire when he tried to harden into an erection. It’s compressed Kilgrave’s cock into quarters, stunted the length, and bubbled him out of proportion. Behind the gag, he keens softly. He turns his face into the bonnet, pressing against the metal.

She’s probably done more damage than the initial piercing, Erik reckons.

Kilgrave’s slick with salvia, the curls at his groin are wet, she’s deep-throated like a pro, swallowed him all the way down.

Erik runs his finger down the length of him, the flesh hot, trapped with blood, and watches Kilgrave jerk. Erik is the only other person Kilgrave’s had sex with since capture, and Erik was kind enough to adjust the length of the piercings, extending the penetrative bar; allowing the D-ring to expand; be wider.

He gave his word not to touch Kilgrave - and Erik stands by his promise – he can suffer the rings until he changes his opinion.

Carefully, Erik takes his helmet off and places it on the bonnet. The metal has cooled in his absence, and he’s trying not to tense with anticipation, with the paranoia that saw him block Charles out for so long.

Erik gave himself three weeks to prepare for this, to let old habits die.

There’s nothing. No sense of otherness, nothing like what happened at the rest stop, or inside the cell.

Erik tilts Kilgrave’s face upward. His eyes are open, feral black, and the only difference between the bike and the forest is the number of people present. If he’s not with Erik, then –

Erik cuts a sharp look toward the woman, where the hooker is jerking the door handle up and down.

Erik purses his mouth tight. He breathes the irritation out, lets it go. Supporting Kilgrave’s head with one hand, Erik slips the helmet on him, cutting off all of his mental abilities. Charles, as a telepath, had hated it, he was born hearing voices in his head, and the absence of other people couldn’t be borne.

Kilgrave jerks feebly. Involuntary tears stream from his eyes; he hiccups around the gag, restless on the bonnet. Erik only gave him two choices. It’s natural Kilgrave went for the girl first, but it’s best he learn this now.

“Did you go inside her mind? Did you try to ease the hurt, like you did with me, in the cell? Did you find your compulsion waiting there?” Erik assumes he must have, or fell into her by mistake. There’s no one else around.

Kilgrave is dangerously hard inside his rings, in peril of cutting himself deep, with the hooker’s drive for sex echoing back.

Erik unscrews the cap, pours water over Kilgrave’s groin, washing away the spit.

It would have been better if it was icy, but the night is cold enough. It takes a little while before erection dwindles.   The water, the cold, the lack of stimulation and the jagged teeth in his flesh do the trick eventually. The helmet, protecting him from the hooker and her compulsion, does the rest. He softens. Kilgrave’s tears haven’t abated. Erik suspects he’s not aware of it.

“It wasn’t real, what you felt. None of that was real. Want, _real_ desire, doesn’t feel like that.”

Kilgrave curls up tighter.

Erik breathes out. He lets the words float by like a cloud. “She’s just a human, Kevin. You don’t focus on them. You don’t fall into them, ever. They’re just things. You stick to your own kind.”

There’s a trick to breaking someone – and sometimes it’s best to start with an ideology that’s close to a pre-existing one. To lead, one step at a time, until they’re headed in the direction _Erik_ wants.

Charles hated the helmet. As an empathy, Kilgrave has relaxed into it, and there’s an odd sense of glee in seeing it happen. Everything Erik owns he will share, but in step by step stages, and by Erik’s timetable.  

When he’s certain Kilgrave is soft, the rings only brushing his cock, no longer digging in, Erik takes the helmet off again, peeling away the protection.

“Focus on me. I won’t hurt you.” He’s already come, bones loose, mind relaxed, unguarded as Erik ever is. “Focus, Kevin, but only on me. I’m your kind.”

Kilgrave’s eyes, still unnaturally dark, squeeze shut. Not so much ‘no’ as a full body negation. He’s trying to stay inside his own head, trying to reject one half of his own mutation. Kilgrave doesn’t want empathy, he wants nothing to do with it unless forced, he wants even less to do with Erik.

“I’m easy to find,” Erik cajoles. “You’ve already done it twice.”

When one minute turns into two, when there’s nothing but quietness in his head, when it’s obvious he has no intention of trying, Erik shrugs. He opens the car door again. The hooker falls out, dark desire, lust – all of Kilgrave’s power – coming for him. Kilgrave throws himself side-on against the bonnet, hips slanted down. She flips him fast, thumbs on his hipbones. She’s between his legs, down on him like a succubus. His cock, now soft, has spaces between the rings and the flesh, miniature arches.

The tip of her tongue darts in. She flexes, pulling downward.

Behind the gag, Kilgrave howls.

He crunches at the mid-riff, upper body curled around her. She’s too low to head-butt, he can’t get his hands off the bonnet to push her head away. His legs are tangled. Her lips are pursed tight.

Erik turns away from the sight.

He sits on the cold earth, spine braced against the tyre.

There’s a trick to breaking someone, and in the most critical, earliest stages, Erik’s own reactions are as important as Kilgrave’s. More so. He can’t afford to get hard, nor allow Kilgrave to feel it emanating from him.

Not yet.

Erik is using Kilgrave’s own weapons against him – his compulsion, body, his comfort in sex – Erik’s teaching him it hurts. Erik won’t offer pleasure – it’s off the table until Kilgrave stops rejecting him – what Erik is offering is more valuable – safe harbour- a place to fall into when it gets to be too much.

All Kilgrave has to do is use his empathy – use his empathy and ignore the woman.

The car thumps. It sounds like she’s fucking her face on his penis, energetic and careless. Erik feels the exact moment Kilgrave slams into him – frantic and _present_ \- curling in tight.  He’s rough, no idea how to mask his arrival.

Erik tries to stay emotionally relaxed, to not tense up. Physically he’s not going to get hard again soon. Mentally, his thoughts - inner monologues - are private. He shares what he can.

Erik breathes in and out, meditative and slow. He opens his eyes, re-tracing the constellations in the sky overhead, and checks his watch. For the first time since Charles died, Erik knows for a fact that there’s someone with him.

Untrained, Kilgrave manages to stay for almost twenty minutes before the hooker does something inspired, with teeth and tongue. His presence flickers inside of Erik’s head like a faulty light in a violent storm. Between one breath and the next, he’s gone, dragged back into his own body.

Kilgrave screams, he flops hard onto the bonnet with the girl latched to his groin.

Hastily, Erik puts the helmet on. The hooker has ten minutes on the clock, and Erik leaves them both, to play it out. He wouldn’t be of assistance to Kilgrave now; his own pulse is starting to increase, a heat growing between his legs.

Isolated, Erik takes care of it in the woods, jerks off a second time with dirty filth - all the things he wants to do - swirling in his minds-eye. He comes like a teenager, explosively quick.

Erik’s willing to let the hunt wait, maybe a week or two; they have a tally of dead behind them, and this on/off, being able to use it/not being able to use it, is remarkably similar to Erik’s own beginnings.

Erik went through it when he was a boy, with Schmidt. Kilgrave is decades older, and nowhere near as innocent.

At exactly one hour, the hooker pulls off, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. She pushes up from her knees and dusts herself down.

Erik comes in from the edges of the forest, his eyes glittering.

“An hours work, yeah, at five times the rate? Easy peasy.” She doesn’t seem worse the wear for the compulsion, a pure business transaction on her behalf, same as any other night. She grins at Erik shrewdly. “There’s no discounts if he doesn’t come though…I’m telling you, I tried every trick in the book.”

“Doesn’t matter if he fails to come.” Kilgrave can’t. Not with anyone save Erik. Expressionless, he offers her the water bottle. She accepts it, drinking thirstily.

 

 

On the car bonnet, Kilgrave pants harshly; she managed to get him hard again. Erik makes a cursory check as the woman drinks the last of the water. He’s bleeding, four straight lines across his cock, prominent as a knife slash where the rings have sunken into him.

Erik takes the manacles off. He catches Kilgrave before he slides off the bonnet. His knees won’t lock; his jeans are still tangled around his boots. He holds on to Erik with both fists, gripping Erik by the shirt’s lapels, his forehead hot and sticky against Erik’s sternum.

In a dragging lurch, Erik gets him into the back, replaces the manacles in the boot with his belongings, and advises the hooker to take the front seat.

He leaves his helmet off the entire ride, probing at the dead space that was so briefly full. Twenty minutes. Twenty measly minutes. Erik drops the hooker off at her corner, pays the remainder of the amount, and helps Kilgrave into the hotel room. Erik gets him situated in the bathroom, sitting on the lip of the tub. It’s the first time since McDonald’s Erik’s taken over the duty of after-care. Perfectly balanced on his toes, Erik crouches between Kilgrave’s legs, with warm water in a cup with a heavy dose of salt. Involuntary tears still leak from Kilgrave’s eyes. He flinches at the submersion, the saltwater washing away the hooker’s spit and the dried blood.

Exhausted, he tips, smashing his face into the crook of Erik’s neck.

 

 

 

Kilgrave doesn’t speak to him at all the following day, wary as a prairie dog.

 

 

 

 

Erik spends it going over maps, names, locations, the people earlier victims had provided for them. He teaches Kilgrave how to make pumpkin and feta risotto at lunchtime, adding the stock a splash at a time. They share the kitchen, the space between them wide as a country.

At six o clock, Erik drags Kilgrave out the door.

Erik turns the car around, the mileage creeping over as they return to a certain part of town.

Kilgrave fidgets, hunches down in his seat, he keeps throwing speaking glances at Erik. Kilgrave draws his limbs in until he starts to appear small; when Erik turns the car into the same street, he loses control of his breathing. It’s the first time he speaks all day.

“I don’t want women.” He looks beseeching. It’s close, not exactly the words Erik wants to hear, but tantalizingly close. “Erik, please. Let’s…let’s work. I don’t want sex.”

“One hour a day, that’s all, until you can use it permanently.” Erik slows the car and unwinds the window. The same hooker from last night grins when she recognises Erik, and saunters over.

“Hey, hey,” she greets. “Same deal?”

In the forest, Erik whispers: “Say ‘you want me’, say ‘suck me’, like you did with Jessica.”  Kilgrave’s eyes have gone white. The hooker waits near the tree line, cleaning her nails idly. Bared and pinned to the bonnet, his exposed cock marred by savage lines, Kilgrave starts to shake. Erik leans close. “Don’t get hard, when she’s got her mouth on you. When it hurts, really hurts; focus on me.”

Soundless, Kilgrave looks once at the woman. He refuses to speak.

Erik pinches Kilgrave’s bottom lip between thumb and forefinger, and with a savage twist, yanks it out. He says, venomously: “After the lip ring, when the tongue stud goes in, I might be able to manipulate it. I might be able to force those words out of your mouth by myself.” Erik grinds, pulping the flesh between his fingers. “It might be garbled at first. I’d have to hurt you, to expel the air - but I believe in using my skill-set until it’s mastered. I don’t care how long it takes. I will make your compulsion mine.”

The horror on Kilgrave’s face is slow. Unmitigated.

On this the second night, Erik uses all four manacles to keep him pinned – he’s not paying the girl to be kicked in the jaw by a panicking mutant – and watches the conflict play out over Kilgrave’s face. He doesn’t break in the direction Erik wants – he won’t accept the last piercing in his tongue - he calls the girl instead.

You want me, he told Jessica. Suck me, he said to any number of women. Open your legs wide, he’d smile. She does. She wants him. She sucks him.  

If the only legs spread on the bonnet are Kilgrave’s, then Erik assumes things got lost in translation.

Erik locks the gag into place and stalks into the woods. Erik’s quicker, stripping the anger out of himself with each jerk of his wrist, until he’s calm.

Impatient to get back, he cuts his time in half. Erik’s barely absent fifteen minutes when he strolls up to them, his feet crunching on the gravel. Erik grabs her by the shoulders and pulls her off with a wet pop. Kilgrave isn’t hard. His chest is heaving but he hasn’t fallen into her mind like he did last night, he’s clearly learned better not to be burned by his own compulsion.

It’s apparent he’s in pain despite being soft, his watering eyes fixed on Erik. They hold eye contact for a long moment.

Erik, keeping the girl at bay by her shoulders, lets her go. She scrabbles forward; she swallows Kilgrave whole, deep-throats, until her mouth is at his curls. She burrows in as if trying to eat him.

Languid, Erik takes his helmet off. He sits on the bonnet beside Kilgrave and strokes him, from wrist to forearm, to get his attention. Willingly, Erik invites. “With me…come on, come on, focus on me. It won’t hurt.”  

Erik shudders faintly, filled with otherness, quicker than the night before and mildly unsettling. Erik had been so afraid of this once, but it’s safer with an empath – less invasive. Erik can work _with_ Kilgrave, train him – all the control lies with Erik, all the power too. “Good,” Erik coaches, and touches Kilgrave innocently, without any intent to hurt, small reminders to stay focused.

“Stay on me.”

He lasts longer the second night. Kilgrave still loses concentration near the end - flies off, flies apart, sobbing on the car bonnet as her teeth catch - but he’s learning at a deliciously fast pace.

Erik takes him back for a third night, a fourth, and a fifth night too.

There are only two discernible differences on each of these occasions. Kilgrave falls into Erik quicker, faster, and for longer stretches of time – and Erik starts to reduce the distance from the city, taking them closer to other people.

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

It’s still agony. There’s nothing good found in it. Cock sucking used to be one of Kilgrave’s favourite activities, now the thought of it makes his stomach turn. He goes clammy. The moment Erik starts looking at respective women; he tries to shut the idea down. He works harder on the hunt – more fervently – he tries to get Erik’s attention on where it should be.

His cock will scar, Kilgrave knows, and there are many scars to be found, both horizontal (from the first night - four slashes across the width of him when the rings cut in) and vertical (when he’s soft - and their teeth catch, or their tongues delve under, and lift, pull, yank).

When he heals – and Kilgrave hasn’t, there’s been no respite – there will be scar tissue and dead zones. There will be entire places where there’s no sensation left to him, the underside of his cock is a warzone, the other side, left unmarred. Erik told him in the cell he’d be impotent without his help - and that future is being carved into him - one night at a time.

Compulsion is the only thing Kilgrave ever worked for, applied all of his will to achieve. It’s his most powerful weapon; his real gift (Kilgrave doesn’t give a fuck if Erik says empathy came first), compulsion is the one that matters.  He never bothered with anything more after, he was content to be lazy, no need to apply himself when everything fell into place at a word. There’s an insidious perversion to what Erik has done.

But he’s never felt compulsion from the other side – never had it reflected back at him - until Miranda did something to his head.

_That’s not what **want** is, Erik said, that’s not real._

Maybe not, but it was overwhelming. Jessica didn’t believe him when he said he couldn’t tell – if people were doing what they wanted or what he said - there was no way for Kilgrave to possibly tell. He preferred it that way. He doesn’t want Erik to teach him how to _focus_ \- he wants his goddamn castle wall back - impenetrable as a Keep.

Kilgrave showers. He makes poached eggs on smashed avocado and sourdough, and glances at Erik once. There’s a pillow crease on the side of his face, chest bare, the sheets are scrunched low at Erik’s hips. He has one leg drawn inward like Peter Pan, and Kilgrave stutters, his motions slowing, because the entire image seems incongruous. Inherently wrong.

Erik’s sleep tousled. He almost gives the illusion of being warm-blooded.   Kilgrave cuts his gaze away, anxious, the emotion free-floating.

He lobs an apple at Erik’s head, knowing he won’t sense it, because breakfast is ready.

Kilgrave’s hungry, and he wants the damn gag off.

“Why’s this hunt so important to you?” Kilgrave asks, over breakfast. It’s a habit, trying to get information, to force a conversation in the moments he’s allowed. Erik still terrifies him, his idea of a learning environment is horrific, but he’s fallen into Erik more than once now, his emotions, his mind, sharp as a blade, even at rest, and his _sense_ of Erik is starting to feel –

Kilgrave cuts the thought off.

“Why’s it not important to you?” Erik parrots back. “You think they will be content with telepaths? How long until they decide teleporters are dangerous? Or compulsion?” Erik flicks an eye at him. “Or harbingers of weather like Storm? Metal users? They killed the _best_ of us. If they thought Charles was a danger to humanity – they have no love for the rest of our kind.”

“Charles could touch anyone on the planet?”

“Charles was extraordinary, and with Cerebro, he could go anywhere. _Great_ men are not content to remain ordinary, or be unseen; they move past their limitations.”

Appalled, Kilgrave looks at his plate. “Don’t be pompous over breakfast. And greatness gets you noticed by the wrong crowd…it gets you killed.” Like Charles, Kilgrave knows better to say.

“I won’t hide,” Erik says, angrily. “We exist. We should be allowed to exist without them interfering with us.”

Teeth bared, Kilgrave intones. “You’re a real champion of mutant rights.” Kilgrave pinwheels. “ _Where are all the other empaths?_ Hiding under rocks to avoid you, in case they get chained, imprisoned, and dragged away too?”

Erik leans back in his seat, raising an eyebrow. “You’re chatty this morning.”

“You said you’d answer any question I asked.”

“You’re an oddity,” Erik says curtly. “Telepaths were more common.”

“We’ve been here long enough,” Kilgrave decides. He throws over his work on Leila Reynolds, because Erik is single-minded, and if he can get him focused on the hunt, away from whatever insanity he’s trying to accomplish in the forest, Kilgrave will last that much longer. “You want Xavier’s killer’s brought to justice? Then stop fucking around with your ‘classes’ and just kill them. You don’t need empathy for that.”

Erik scrolls through the screen. “One hour a day, and I plan on doing both.”

 

 

They find Leila Reynolds at 3:15 in the afternoon: _Tell me about CHX-1. Who designed it? Who worked on the project with you? Give me a list of names of all surviving co-workers, and their addresses, write it down if necessary. Were you aware of the ultimate result of CHX-1? Who gave the order to release it worldwide? Leila, do you have any last regrets?_

Later, after she gives up Norman West, Kilgrave will add: _Tell me, is there anything else I should know?_

Kilgrave doesn’t beg, not anymore - it has the opposite effect on Erik - it turns his face scornful, Kilgrave’s tears, pleas, his blood, can lend Erik a mocking tone, or worse, give rise to a slow fascination.

When they pull over in the forest track, Kilgrave’s out of the car first, stamping his feet for warmth. Face pale in the moonlight, Erik seems mildly surprised as he stands on the other side. Kilgrave opens the back, offers his hand to the hooker, as if they’ve arrived at the opera, and escorts her to the bonnet. “What’s your name?” Kilgrave asks.

“Keira.”

Erik looks at him suspiciously.

“You want me, Keira,” Kilgrave says, flatly. He knows the hated script, the words Erik insists on. “You desire me.”

Keira won’t do anything until Kilgrave offers the last part of the triptych, and that won’t happen until Erik gives the go ahead. Kilgrave smiles at her, standing close together in the cold. Erik pauses, then moves to the rear of the vehicle to grab the manacles. Kilgrave ducks his head, brushes his cheek against hers. “Be gentle. Please, be gentle,” he breathes.

She smiles, her eyes softening with acknowledgement.

Kilgrave ignores the bite of cold steel around his wrists when Erik snaps the restraints on. Ignores the thumping in his heart, because he spoke out of turn. Erik stands beside him while Kilgrave stares straight ahead. “Go on.”

“Suck me,” Kilgrave instructs. He thinks he should hate her, but he doesn’t, he can’t, he’d fallen into her by mistake that first night.

Her mouth is warm wetness and a sinuous tongue. Despite the accidental catches, Keira doesn’t purse her mouth, doesn’t drag over the metal.

Kilgrave flinches at the first swipe, the minor jerks on the rings, Erik prowls into the forest and Kilgrave stays upright, braced against the bonnet. Mouth full with the gag, he sweats, determined to stay with his own thoughts, in his own mind, to not fly apart like before. He’s still present when Erik returns. Savage with the minor victory, Kilgrave stays grounded until the hour ticks over.

His chest is heaving by the time it’s done, the hurt a familiar note. Erik’s expression has gone flat. His eyes glint with banked emotion as he scrutinizes Kilgrave (and whatever emotion it is, Erik can fucking keep it to himself, Kilgrave thinks. I don’t feel you. You’re nothing).

Keira drinks from a water bottle, standing offside as she waits.

Erik glances at his cock, soft and wet with spit. He puts his helmet on, and in his customary fashion, takes the gag out.

“Maybe I haven’t been generous enough, Jessica did say you had one girl for each arm.” Erik uses Kilgrave’s own underwear to wipe him dry. “Or maybe you’ve plateaued, become accustomed to the pain? Her wet mouth too soft now, to do the job?”

Kilgrave shivers faintly, staring straight ahead.

“Did you try to use empathy?”

“Yes,” Kilgrave lies instantly. “You want me to practice, once a day.”

Erik’s mouth twitches. “I can feel you, in here, when you do.” He taps the side of his helmet.

Kilgrave hadn’t known. Erik never said anything aloud, not to Kilgrave, and all he wanted was one day without being forced to feel a tangle of emotions - some of which weren’t his. Erik doesn’t hurt, he’s oddly calm in the moments Kilgrave crashes into him, but he’s becoming known in a way that feels treacherous, more dangerous than the physical pain –

It’s becoming easy, to fall into him.

Kilgrave freezes, caught out in the lie. His heart beats hard. Pained, he says, as if it’s a secret. “You’re going to drive me insane.”

He’s not a telepath; he can’t assign an emotion to an inner monologue, make things distinct inside his own mind. The few times he’s used empathy the emotions blur, he can’t separate himself from Erik with any sense of ease.

He’s starting to ache all the time, like a muscle that’s been overstrained with constant use. Kilgrave’s as scared of this – of what Erik is doing - as of the things that are happening to his body.

“I won’t let that happen. Trust me, Kevin. I’m safe.”

He’s not. Erik’s the most dangerous man Kilgrave knows.

Erik frowns when he doesn’t get a response. He calls out to Keira: “Same rate for another thirty minutes of your time.”

Her mouth curls. “I’m not sucking him, my jaw’s sore.”

“Hand-job?”

She laughs easily. “Done.”

“One hour a day, just _try_.” Erik curls a hand around his nape. “Tell her to jerk you off, roughly.”

Kilgrave doesn’t beg, it’s never made a dent on Erik’s sense of compassion, but he can’t get the words out at first. They’re lodged in his throat with a whine. Erik doesn’t press him, or threaten the tongue stud, he gives Kilgrave a long five minutes to compose himself. Erik squeezes his neck, reassuringly, when Kilgrave does as he’s told.

Erik puts the gag in, takes his helmet off.

Kilgrave falls at the first hard yank, as if Keira’s milking a cow’s tit.

It gets muddied. There’s a layer between the landscape of reality and emotion. It gets confused – it’s mixed with hurt, the foreknowledge he’s unravelling. Soon, there won’t be anything left to hold onto – it’s mixed with patience-want-appreciation and treacherous undercurrents, riptides Kilgrave can’t navigate. Erik, conversely, relaxes, the deeper Kilgrave sinks, the calmer Erik becomes.

“Time’s up,” he hears, muffled, an age away. He’s open. His mind is pried wide apart.   Her hand was slick near the end but not with any kind of lube. He has three rings now; Kilgrave knows distantly, not four, but he doesn’t want to go there.   She had twisted so hard. He curls into Erik tighter, deeper, an animal whine in the back of his throat. “Stay,” Erik agrees, the hand on his nape squeezes once. “Stay, you’re safe, you’re wanted.”

He’s grateful. He can’t be anywhere else.

There’s a pop, as if someone’s chewing gum, she’s cleaning her nails near a tree. “I think he’s broken.” There’s a callous edge to it, a tone women sometimes use when belittling men. He flinches, he doesn’t care; they look at her as if she’s a breed apart. Kilgrave’s eyes are open. Resentment/jealousy at her continued presence fires through him. He/they/Erik, want her gone.

Erik flicks his eyes at her. He drives the metal file straight up her nail, leaving the bed raw, exposed, the nail flicked away. Keira screams, loud and unexpected.

“You’re being paid well enough. I don’t require the commentary.”

Kilgrave stays deep within through the drive, to the street corner where they drop her off, into the hotel room.   He lies belly down on the bed, his muscles fire off in random spasms, Erik places a hand between his shoulder-blades until they quieten. He feels Erik’s _commitment,_ when he grabs a suturing kit, experienced at sewing a thousand personal wounds, through the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s and onward. He gives Kilgrave something to hold onto – bright and shiny, a perfect D-ring – and he whines, Kilgrave knows he does, curling in deeper at the pull of needle and thread, until he doesn’t feel anything. He’s calm, competent and skilled at this, certain of his actions too. Concentration and affection twin together – written down as a neat row of stitches - applied to the open tear. “Good,” Erik says later. “Just stay with me.”

Blanketed, he stays. They’re a tangle of limbs, he can’t tell where one starts and the other leaves off; nameless, he stays.

He wakes up in the afternoon two days later in a haze of pain. His mind bruised, isolated again. Erik, his hair standing on-end from where he’s fisted it, looks up keenly. Kilgrave stares at him. Disappointed, a muscle ticks in Erik’s jaw, his body tenses marginally. Erik puts his helmet on, and takes Kilgrave’s gag off.

Kilgrave thinks there ought to be recuperation after a thing like that, recovery at least, but Erik steps up the pace. He’ll drag him out midday; he’ll drag him out in the morning, from the forest to the suburbs, to the outer reaches of the city. Erik never touches Kilgrave with anything approaching lust.

He only uses hookers. Instructed by Kilgrave, they leave his cock alone, they tug his balls instead, racked like a humbler, until he’s screaming.

 

&&

 

 

 

“The body of a hiker was found in the Scottish Highlands yesterday morning. It is believed that Janet McKillock, twenty-seven years old, fell into a disused miner’s shaft. Her death isn’t considered suspicious, but a terrible tragedy for both family and friends.”

Numbly, Kilgrave looks up. In his free time he’s reading any paper published by Charles Xavier – any telepath worth their salt can block – and he’s looking for clues, a way to fix his brittle foundations. The stitches came out after five weeks, and he carries the missing D-ring in his pocket. He doesn’t want to return it to Erik, it’s _his_ and Kilgrave has so few possessions of his own, but he’s confused as to why.

The newsflash catches his attention. It’s the first victim the police have found so far. Kilgrave chews on the gag, eyes narrowed. It might do to check in with the police tomorrow, have a word with a member and see if any other bodies have been flagged. They’ve been going through them at twice the speed now, anything to keep Erik distracted. They got the name of a general a day ago.

He looks over to check with Erik, trying to get a read on his facial expressions.

Disdain, irritation for the police, Kilgrave/Erik want to start hunting again. Paranoia is flaring, because Daniel said they were trying to mutate the contagion. From across the room, cleaning his world war two memorabilia (and of course it’s a soddin’ dagger) Erik spins about. The surprise is amplified, doubled twice over.

Erik drops the knife and is off the seat in a heartbeat.

Startled, Kilgrave flails, throwing himself _out_ in the process. He falls off the bed with a thump. And oh, this is so much worse. Kilgrave didn’t even need a catalyst, painless and smooth, it happened as easily as using compulsion.

Erik’s around the bed, in the space between the mattress and the wall, where Kilgrave had landed without dignity. Erik crouches. Kilgrave snarls at him, angry, his own emotion flaring bright, trying to rid himself of the alien insight.

“It’s alright,” Erik says, without a trace of mockery. “You’re doing fine.”

 

 

&&

 

 

It flashed on and off like a lightbulb –

There was no catalyst –

If he gets to the stage where he can’t turn it off –

If it becomes permanent, like the compulsion -

Kilgrave, with the same sense of panic he felt in the bike clearing, thinks there’s a very good reason why there aren’t many empaths –

_Compulsion and empathy are meant to be twinned,_ Miranda had said. If Kilgrave gets free, he’s going to _make_ her change him back.

They move from Nottingham to Oxford, leaving Keira behind.

When Erik slows down near the seedy part of town, preparing for their hour, Kilgrave closes his eyes and says listlessly. “Please, I need a day. Two.” He needs a day without being pushed; he needs to be himself.

They’re too entangled. He’d slipped into Erik as if the borders of flesh didn’t exist.

Erik doesn’t respond to pleas but his ear can be turned by a valid argument. Three months with Erik and Kilgrave knows he can be swayed, he’ll accept a barter, something in exchange. Kilgrave’s only belongings are his body and his mind, and if Erik wants both, then giving away the body seems the lesser of two evils.  

On the periphery of his awareness, Kilgrave’s aware that Erik jerks off. He’ll come back smelling like sex, there will be a lassitude to his emotions, a sense of well-being. He never exposes Kilgrave to lust – not since the bike – but it had existed in the rest stop, he knows there’s something Erik wanted from him, and it’s something Kilgrave can give now, if it delays the other.

“I’ll suck you,” Kilgrave trades, desperately. “If you leave the helmet on, if you leave me alone for a day, I’ll suck you.”

“You’ll suck me for a rest day?” Erik says, precisely, as if it’s important to establish the rules.

“Keep the helmet _on_ and I’ll suck you.” Kilgrave negotiates fast. “ _I need a break_ , Erik, you’re pushing too hard.”

“Have you done it before?”

“You’ve taught me everything else,” Kilgrave says waspishly. “Why not this?”

“Agreed,” Erik replies, instantly. “One hour instead of class. I’ll keep the helmet on.” One day without being forced to use empathy, to try to try dam up those unexpected leaks. Erik seems content with the deal. Kilgrave, wary, suddenly isn’t so sure of its merits.

Erik had agreed way too eagerly.

 

&&

 

 

If there’s a trick to surviving extended captivity, then Kilgrave needs to confer with Jessica fast.

He chokes on Erik, struggling as his gag-reflex kicks in.

Erik strikes the back of his throat and stays there until Kilgrave’s stomach heaves rebelliously. “We’re going to have to work on that,” Erik denotes. He has one hand cupped under Kilgrave’s chin, thumb stroking Kilgrave’s cheek.

He smells like _male,_ slightly bitter, hard edges where there should be soft planes. His thighs are thick with muscle; he’s defined across the abdomen. His pubic hair is red as Set. His cock, thick on Kilgrave’s tongue, is cut at the end.

On his knees, Kilgrave’s eyes water until Erik draws his hips away, sliding his cock out.  

He coughs, forehead pressed against Erik’s belly as he catches his breath. Erik ruffles his hair. He guides Kilgrave’s chin up and slides in a second time, shallower, not as deep.

Kilgrave flattens his tongue. He suckles, gently.   Erik rumbles, his hips thrust once, twice, and Kilgrave tries to relax his throat as instructed.

“You’re so good.”

The compliment twists in him, makes Kilgrave hot, flustered.   He’s numb between the legs, the only concern he has is making Erik feel good and it’s…restful. He wants to be good at this, wants to be very good, so Erik will say yes, if Kilgrave asks for a second rest.

In this precise moment, he’s not hurting.

In this precise moment, Erik’s helmet is on and Kilgrave’s mind is his own, for the first time in weeks.

It’s hard to be angry with Erik, when Kilgrave is overflowing with _gratitude._ He sinks into it, applies himself to every whisper Erik makes, every little correction. He sucks gently. He sucks hard. He learns to guard his teeth and slide Erik in further and further, until he’s lodged in Kilgrave’s throat. He learns to nurse. Erik is the maestro, the orchestra; he’s the war-drums in the background. Kilgrave can feel Erik’s pulse, tripping on his tongue.

When Erik finally comes, pulsing thick and vicious down Kilgrave’s throat, it feels like peace.

He gulps, swallows, eyes closed and serene. Erik runs a finger down his cheek. “You’re so good, like this,” he reiterates.

Filled to the brim with something unnamed, Kilgrave presses his face against Erik’s stomach.

 

&&

 

 

 

 

In Oxford, they find three scientists scurrying away like rats. After interrogation, Erik kills one messily - needlessly messy - blood soaking the ground.

Kilgrave flinches.

“You felt that?” Erik pauses in his work – if Kilgrave’s hyper-aware of the other man – he thinks it’s true for Erik, too. Erik’s eyes are knowing, expectant as he lowers the knife. “Don’t lie to me.”

Unsettled, Kilgrave says. “Yes.”  Not as visceral as damage done to Kilgrave’s own body, but faded and off-centre, like the scream of children, like the facility Kilgrave grew up in.   It puts him on edge, makes him uncomfortable, the room seems louder. “Shut up,” he growls, to the scientist groaning.

“Don’t fall into them, just skim over the top, if you need to focus on someone, use me.”

Kilgrave arches an eyebrow. “Very helpful advice with the glory hat on.”

Rolling his eyes, Erik tosses him the gag.

Kilgrave turns it over once in his palm, feeling the weight of it, then indifferently puts it on. Erik locks it from the other side of the room and takes his helmet off.

He looks relieved with it gone, Kilgrave notices; some barely perceptible tension vaporizes like smoke. Erik’s body becomes loose, languid, and that’s not a good line of thought to have, it reminds Kilgrave of last night.

“Try to sense beyond the room, if you can. _Stretch_. Don’t go deep, unless it’s me.”

Kilgrave chews at the gag absently, he’s happy enough to reach beyond the room. No one in his or her right mind wants to feel that.

The scientist, skin hanging from him in strips, screams into the ball-gag. Erik grins at Kilgrave, happy when he tries; Kilgrave, oddly enough, is happy too.

Erik’s bright and bloody, fierce as the sun. They don’t trip over each other anymore; Kilgrave doesn’t balk when Erik strokes his back, when he bumps his shoulder over coffee. He stays silent - wide-eyed and still - when Erik smiles at him. His heart will thump once, loud and traitorous.

“What’s it feel like?”

“What?”

Kilgrave shrugs, at a loss. “When I fall?” He can’t understand why anyone would invite it - to leave themselves open like that.

“It feels like an irritation,” Erik replies, dismissively.

They heckle each other; they start to trade barbs again.

At night, serene, Kilgrave goes to his knees without complaint, wanting to please, to stay like this.

He blows Erik sweetly on the couch for _hours_. The hole Erik made of his mouth, stretched open by gags, gives him a better tolerance than hookers. Kilgrave could suck him endlessly. Erik shivers, makes small movements without his normal grace. Kilgrave goes down, dirty and quick, stones biting into his knee in alleyways across Britain, trying to please him.

On the bed, Erik will shove his cock in until Kilgrave deep throats. He’s knees will dig into Kilgrave’s collarbones; his weight will rest on Kilgrave’s upper chest. He’ll make a loose circuit of his hand, not squeezing Kilgrave’s throat, but feeling for the outline of himself. “I’m in you,” Erik whispers. Wondrous, Kilgrave knows it. Erik’s in so deep he’ll never scrub out.

 

He wants it to stay like this - Kilgrave could get comfortable here, with Erik’s helmet on, his mind is mostly his own, but Erik brings the women back, and starts mixing the two sessions again.  

 

 

 

Kilgrave is soft – always soft.

He’s soft when burying his face into Erik’s groin, calm in his own head, and he’s soft when groaning on a bed. “Tell her to bite your cock-head, once every five minutes, not hard, enough to leave teeth impressions.” Or, “Tell her to tug your balls away.” Kilgrave doesn’t feel it. He’s safe, Erik’s blunted all of his edges - like an animal, Kilgrave curls close, because human’s aren’t his kind – and Erik is his only contact for comfort. There’s something changing inside, he’s no longer fighting so hard for the isolation, the secluded privacy, of his mind.

Erik is intimacy, and he shares everything with Kilgrave.

He’s in London, the streets swarming with people when the last thread snaps. There’s nothing dramatic or overt about it. Considering how much he fought, suffered, to avoid the outcome, Kilgrave is outraged at the mundanity of it all, like throwing a back out when tying up shoelaces - there ought to be a better story behind it.  

There are red buses flying by, the crowds stand shoulder to shoulder as they hustle across busy streets. People in business attire use their brief cases like blunt force weapons. It’s a perfectly sunny day, Erik has his helmet on, Kilgrave’s mouth is free, he’s trying to cajole Erik into a night on the couch, a cooked meal, a hot mouth on his cock when the world tilts.   Erik stops to buy a newspaper, he still prefers print over digital, and Kilgrave is studying the street –  

The world greys, becomes disorientating, too loud and too much. These moments have always been intermitted; they flash on and off, they never last for any length of duration, not without a catalyst. Kilgrave will fall into his own head in a minute, or two; except he doesn’t.

He’s angry and he’s bored, irritated, in a rush; he’s in love, dismay, depressed, _suicidal;_ he’s uncontained. Kilgrave clamps his hands over his ears, because everything is loud. He can’t find Erik, there’s a steel wall where he should be.

Erik taught Kilgrave to focus instead of block, and he can’t, overwhelmed at the unexpectedness of it. The empathy runs as rampant as the compulsion and he can’t turn it off. He’ll go insane, Kilgrave realises, that long-held confession he bared coming to fruition. He fell into the deep end before he was ready.

Erik opens the paper, searching the obituaries.   In all the time they’ve been together he’s only insisted on three things, don’t speak unless instructed, follow his orders, and tell the truth.

Swaying, Kilgrave croaks: “I need help.”

Erik takes one look at him. He drops the newspaper, grabs Kilgrave by the arm and pushes him against the brownstone wall. Erik slams a hand against Kilgrave’s mouth, muting him, and takes his helmet off. Erik has it reversed and on Kilgrave in less than ten seconds. Kilgrave slides to a crouch on the sidewalk, his war, all of his wars, lost.

Erik goes to ground with him. His voice is low, reassuring, he strokes Kilgrave from wrist to forearm, like he used to do on the bonnet, when getting Kilgrave’s attention. “The helmet’s yours, whenever you need it, all you have to do is tell me.”   He kisses Kilgrave once, hard on the lips.

The metal edges curl under Kilgrave’s chin, fixing it in place, like the day they met. Kilgrave had looked at Erik with such cocky disdain once, from the opposite side of the glass, he thought him irrelevant. The empathy’s permanent, Kilgrave knows, and he can’t feel that cacophony of emotion, all the time, every minute of every day without becoming like the rest of the empaths, without going insane, but if he can winnow it down to one person, one person only. Kilgrave shudders once

“You did the right thing, you did exactly like you were supposed to.” Erik kisses Kilgrave again, slower, more heated, his tongue a confident greeting. “I’ll take the helmet off in a minute, when you’re ready - and then you focus on me - like we’ve practiced before. You can trust me, I’m safe.”

Erik is. Erik’s the only safe harbor, utterly familiar in this stormy seascape. Kilgrave raises his head, staring across at the Thames.

Erik changes position, until they’re sitting side by side; he has one leg splayed out, his opposite knee drawn close. He looks content; relaxed in the sun, he looks stunningly beautiful and young. They sit for a long time, until the alien swell of emotion, the nausea of it, is a distant memory. Kilgrave can’t wear the helmet forever, he wants his compulsion back, he needs his compulsion, and besides, the helmet clashes terribly with his suit.

Erik is safe.

A rowing team glides down the Thames, their oars cutting into the water with precision strokes.

“You knew what you were doing all along, didn’t you?”

Every evasion Kilgrave tried only netted him tighter. It’s not accusing. He’s been through disbelief, humiliation, agony, he’s been through rage, begging and bartering. He’s feared for his independence and his sanity, for all of those little steps, his tone sounds closer to acceptance.

Erik answers, like a threat: “I won’t let you go.”

Contained, Kilgrave closes his eyes again.

_Promise?_

 

 

&&

 

 

 

 

They kill a dozen people in the next week. Kilgrave, Erik thinks delightedly, is definitely not safe.

Erik uses Kilgrave’s compulsion outwardly, as if the weapon is his own.

They share food, kills, they trade off between equipment as needed; Erik can feel _otherness_ nearly all the time, not invasive, but savagely welcomed – focus on me, skim over anybody else – Erik uses the secondary gift as a perfect secret - it binds Kilgrave tighter than any leash Erik could fashion; a perfect reflection for every impulse Erik contains.

This is who Kilgrave is or should have been, he doesn’t feel emotions the way others do, and for Erik there’s no shame in being what you are. Kilgrave ran for thirty years before he selected Jessica, not knowing what he was – safe behind his castle wall - he had said: “You can teach me to be a better person; but you’d have to _stay_ with me, Jessica, I can’t do it on my own.”

Jessica, at the first sign of trust, drugged Kilgrave and threw in a wet-cell. “He’s a creep,” Jessica said over the phone. “His concept of morality is fucking alien.”   Jessica couldn’t stand to be in the presence of her tormentor, they may have saved four lives together, but she wasn’t obliged to be his teacher. She wouldn’t be guilt-tripped into thinking she ought to. Jessica had every right to say no, to live her own life as she chose.

Erik, when he found out for certain what Kilgrave was, couldn’t start classes fast enough.

There’s an irony for you.

He doesn’t feel anything but satisfaction for Kilgrave’s presence. Erik doesn’t need to break him out-right - one slow step at a time accomplishes the same thing, and does it more thoroughly.

If there’s a trick to breaking someone, it’s to give the illusion of options – to make them complicit – so later they can say to themselves, and without any concept of irony: ‘this is where I am now, and this is the path I chose’.

 

 

 

 

 

“Someone’s coming,” Kilgrave says, mildly, a month later.

“You certain?” Erik can’t sense anything, no creeping metal, nothing shaped like a weapon, Erik’s gone out of his way to shore up his weaknesses but he raises an arched eyebrow.

Kilgrave bangs his heels against the bedspread then throws himself backward, petulant, limbs akimbo as he squints at the ceiling.

Erik touches the silverware, the trophy for dressage, awarded for third place. He paces the room in lazy circuits, bored: teapot on display, a plate in the sink, marmalade on the counter.  

“Mmm, they feel…organised? I dunno, a little bit on edge.”

There’s a passport in the kitchen drawer, money instead of credit cards, an e-ticket for Barcelona. Erik thumbs through it, pockets the cash and leaves the rest in the drawer. “Numbers?”

Kilgrave’s crap at distinguishing numbers: at distinguishing the emotions from one another.

Erik stopped torturing Kilgrave when the empathy became permanent –as a direct by-product, Erik no longer jerks off once a day. Organised is correct, he muses, but ‘edgy’ might just be Erik.

He hasn’t had sex in weeks

Kilgrave’s learning how to skim over the top rather than sink – returning to Erik if he starts to lose concentration or tires mentally - the women might be gone, but ‘practice’ hasn’t, and Erik’s still teaching.

Denying his heritage as a mutant is what allowed Erik to get a foothold in the first place - and as far as Erik is concerned - is entirely Kilgrave’s own fault. Burying his head in the sand only left Kilgrave open for attack, although Erik appreciated that upturned ass, the minute he saw it.  When he was a boy, Kilgrave should have trusted adults, gone to his own kind after he escaped the facility; he should have gone to _Charles,_ Erik thinks, forlorn. Charles could have helped, in his absence, it’s been left to Erik.

“Singular,” Kilgrave declares, and stretches like a cat. He’s begun to wear waistcoats lately: belts, scarves; a dapper style of clothing he might have favoured before.

Erik promised not to touch him until Kilgrave asked – and he stands by it. _Your reasoning is disturbed!_ Kilgrave had ranted, once, but language isn’t precise and there’s room for interpretation in any given sentence. Not touching him didn’t preclude _other_ people not touching him, so Erik was true to his word, but it’s been weeks now since London happened.

Erik has a serious case of blue-balls, waiting for Kilgrave to make the final step toward him, and it’s put Erik in the mood for mayhem.

When Margaret Frey opens the door she finds two men lounging, and tries to run the other way. “Lieutenant Dawson,” she provides, when asked to provide the names of co-conspirators.

“A Lieutenant?” Kilgrave clarifies, leaning forward. “And what was his mission statement?”

“Clandestine unit, a snatch and grab team.” Margaret moans, her eyes skittering toward the fake passport, her getaway stash, the flight to Barcelona that she’ll never catch. “He stole children.”

Erik halts. He turns on his heel, eyes choppy, the same colour grey as his helmet. “Have you heard of Miranda Mercell? Was she one of the children Lieutenant Dawson stole?”

“Yes, a healer, Miranda’s priceless,” Margaret sobs. “Not the type of mutant we want to destroy.”

Ill tempered, Erik smiles.

Her face falls. She dies, bloodless and quick: Margaret Frey has a heart attack before Erik can make his displeasure known. “That’s inconvenient,” Kilgrave muses, staring at her slumped body.

“Tell them not to panic next time,” Erik suggests, Kilgrave hasn’t sucked him since their bartering system became moot, and Erik is starting to _chafe._

 

 

 

 

 

“I need to speak to a friend.”

“You have them?”

“More than you.”

Kilgrave turns the blinker on and pulls out into the morning traffic. Erik slides down in the seat. He spreads his thighs a little wider, in a bid to get comfortable. Kilgrave’s eyes follow the hip movement, he colours. Fascinated, Erik watches him.

“What kind of friend?” Kilgrave asks, pensively.

“The old kind. A close one.” Erik runs his hand over his thigh, up and down, thumb against the inseam. Kilgrave’s eyes flicker toward his crotch and dash away again, amused, Erik turns his face away. “Turn right, slow down at the next intersection.” They park outside a club with a certain reputation among the mutant set. Erik orders easily,  “Come inside with me.”

Kilgrave glances once at the building, then recoils so fast he almost starbursts the window with the back of his skull.

“A friend of mine owns it. There are a number of affiliated clubs around the world, they’re collectively known as The Hellfire.” He wonders how many mutants are inside, lots, judging by Kilgrave’s reaction.

Kilgrave’s eyes have dilated near black, he’s not looking at Erik when he barters: “I’ll suck you, don’t take me in.”

“You’ve sucked me already, with the helmet on.”

“You can fuck me then,” Kilgrave dodges. He grimaces, attention skittering toward the club. “I’m an empath, Erik. _Your_ empath, don’t take me in.”

It’s hard to remain indifferent to the offer, to hear the affirmation of ownership coming from Kilgrave so readily, and not react. Erik hasn’t fucked him since the bike clearing, almost ten months away, and the want of it is choking him. Whatever’s coming from the building, all of those suffering souls inside, it must be loud; a hot night at Hellfire. He keeps his face impassive, just a little bit more, he reasons, come on. Kilgrave only had one clause when he initiated physical contact between them.

“You need to hurt me? Even without the women?” Kilgrave tries, his brow furrowed. “Then take the helmet off, Erik, arousal always hurts, but don’t take me in.”

“Done,” Erik agrees, instantly.

 

 

&&

 

 

 

Unlike the cell, Erik uses lube. He takes his time, sinking one finger in deep, turning it into two, pushing in three. He stretches Kilgrave as if he has all the time in the world – as if he could make these minor adjustments for eternity – until Kilgrave’s hole is glistening with slick, stretched wide around three digits.

Unlike the cell, they’re face to face, eye to eye, Erik doesn’t need a pane of glass to see his reflection.

Similar to the cell, as in ten months ago, there’s a barrier. He resents the gag; Erik hates the helmet, these divisional tools that won’t be necessary soon.

He could fold in four fingers, he thinks, he could push in five, or squeeze a fist, but doesn’t. Erik knows not to rush. He knows not to rush _them_ , it took Erik decades to trust Charles Xavier, it’s taken Kilgrave little under a year to trust Erik.  

He’s achingly careful when he takes his fingers out, when he hooks Kilgrave’s knee over his shoulder, leaving him exposed, and sinks his cock inside. Kilgrave’s soft. He hasn’t been hard since Keira, when his own compulsion was reflected back, months and months ago. His chest is juddering with the memory of it, of having an erection, of what it felt like, when the rings were sadistically tight.

“Take it off,” Erik encourages. He kisses Kilgrave’s torso, lowers his head to swipe at a nipple with the point of his tongue, making Kilgrave complicit by following the order. Kilgrave’s hands find the helmet; they land on either side of it, trembling, before he pulls it free.

He makes an aborted sound around the gag – _a ha-huh_ – as he hardens in a rush, fast as the clearing, and Erik allows it, nothing drags or pulls, the metal moves, fluidly. Erik brings his entire focus to bear, to make this pain-free, to make it good. Kilgrave’s cock curls shyly.

Erik rocks into him, gentle as a sailboat. “I want this gag gone. I want the tongue stud, so I can kiss you, whenever I want,” Erik confesses. Later, he’ll add: “You know it’s the truth. I don’t lie to you.”

The movements between them are infinitesimal, small and dragging. Kilgrave tenses helplessly, his cock trapped between both their bodies. Erik doesn’t stop, he knows it has to sting, but the pleasure outweighs the hurt here and Erik shares everything, he always has. Taut as rigging, Kilgrave starts to urge Erik on.

He makes it last, until they’re both sweaty, until the buzz in Erik’s head is as deep as Charles managed. Frustrated at the gentle pace, Kilgrave takes over, working himself on Erik’s dick, and Erik flattens his entire weight, dropping down on the rings and bearing down. Kilgrave groans, his eyes roll upward, he comes – slow – he messes his stomach and Erik’s too, until pliant, he falls still.

Erik pulls away a fraction so Kilgrave can _feel_ Erik is hard. So Kilgrave knows, for a fact, coming first was all on him.

Erik runs his fingers through the spunk; he pushes it around the edges of the gag, and feeds it into Kilgrave’s mouth. “That’s want,” Erik says, and punctuates it with a single thrust. “That’s you, wanting me.”

The mess makes the glide easier. Erik keeps rocking, a roll of his hips, reclaiming the gentle movements of earlier. He kisses the sides of the gag, the edges of Kilgrave’s cheek, he rocks until the pleasure builds into a white-out, and then he keeps going. Erik comes with his teeth at Kilgrave’s throat, all the air sucked from the room. Spent, Kilgrave comes a second time, dry and used up, still connected with Erik, tangled in tight.

 

 

 

They’re in sync, perfectly lethal, after that.

 

&&

 

 

 

Erik is a strategist, a general, and a soldier too, he’s comfortable being in the foreground, being in charge. He’s comfortable being _seen._ Kilgrave prefers the shadows.

He’s standing with his back to the wall, hands in his pockets when Lieutenant Dawson and his men leave. The rings are tighter than they should be, Erik’s way of reminding Kilgrave to not move, to stay still, until Erik’s dealt with them.

Dawson and his unit tumble out of the building like a pack of jackals, laughing, their voices rowdy in the night. They’re in civilian clothing, cargo pants and polo-shirts, their buzz cuts marking them as military despite the missing insignias. The vehicles parked outside the clubhouse are government-issue, nondescript black SUVs, like a cliché from a television series.

Erik comes at them from the side.

“Lieutenant Dawson,” Kilgrave calls out. “Sit down with your hands behind your head.”

One man obediently sits; fingers laced behind his head, and Erik slaughters the rest. Erik pulls a firearm from the last man exiting the building and fires three shots from behind, blowing their skulls apart. The remaining three members of the unit peel away from one another, scattering in opposite directions. Erik’s dagger flashes. It chases after one soldier like a heat-seeking missile, planting itself hilt-deep into his back, severing the spinal cord from behind. The soldier drops to his knees with a gargle, kicking up the dirt around him in his death throes.  

The man whose gun was originally used, hurtles inside the club-house, slamming the door. Kilgrave can hear him, shoving things aside, smashing out the rear window.

The remaining soldier pulls his weapon and fires consecutive shots at Erik, who swats the bullets aside like flies. The bullets redirect, returning to the point of origin, striking the soldier in mid-riff, chest and throat.

Kilgrave turns his head, motionless, as the last man climbs out of the clubhouse window with a tranquilizer rifle. He drops into the bushes, crouched low to the ground, and runs forward with his weapon raised. He has Erik in his sights when Kilgrave says mildly, “Look up.”

The soldier does. Erik drops an SUV on him.

Lieutenant Dawson sits cross-legged on the ground, eyes wild, hands above his head.

Erik hasn’t broken a sweat. He doesn’t need Kilgrave’s help when it comes to combat. Erik uses his power effortlessly. He reminds Kilgrave of the statues he saw in Florence, vivid perfection found in bronze. Kilgrave thinks, unbidden, _he’s mine. You’re mine._

Erik’s hard, seemingly untouchable, and Kilgrave wants to smudge his fingerprints all over him. Besides a gag, a ring, and the occasional use of a helmet, Erik’s the only possession he has worth claiming.

Turned on, wanting, Kilgrave shifts. He’s been talking all day, trying to get a fix on Dawson’s location. Erik has been helmeted all day, and Kilgrave misses the steel trap of Erik’s mind. Kilgrave goes forward because he wants to leave Erik dishevelled and sweaty; he wants to take the severity from Erik’s countenance and replace it with something good. Kilgrave drops to his knees, hands on Erik’s thighs not because he’s bartering, or looking for an exchange, but because he _wants_ to; because he’s happy, and if he can’t _feel_ Erik then Kilgrave’s going to get his quota by touch instead.

Kilgrave has his fly open, mouth on Erik’s dick, while the other man is still narrow-eyed from the fight.

Erik goes preternaturally still.

Kilgrave knows what Erik likes, Erik tutored him for days on the subject, and he takes Erik from zero to a hundred with a few choice moves. He pulls off, licking Erik’s cockhead like an ice-cream cone, delicate swipes of his tongue curling around the edges. Erik groans. His thighs tremble, there’s shuttered surprise in his eyes when Kilgrave chances a glance up. Kilgrave ignores the startled expression: he concentrates on making him feel good. Erik thrusts twice, helplessly, and smug, Kilgrave hums around his length. When Erik touches his cheek, there’s a fine tremor in his hand, a sense of wonder to the caress.

Kilgrave’s not in a rush, he doesn’t want anything in return. He’s doing this of his own accord.

Kilgrave’s content with the images, at seeing Erik’s raw power on display, with the smell of Erik, the weight of Erik’s dick on his tongue. Kilgrave nuzzles in, hands travelling to Erik’s ass. There are stones digging into his knees, eyes half slitted with concentration. Erik groans again, louder, his hands wander from Kilgrave’s cheek to the shell of his ears, before curling both hands around Kilgrave’s nape. Erik’s fingers interlock, he shoves Kilgrave’s face hard into his groin.

Kilgrave relaxes his mouth, allowing Erik to slide deep into his throat. Serene, he swallows. Erik’s breath hitches at the constriction. He keeps both hands settled on Kilgrave’s nape, gagging him full with dick. “You’re perfect,” Erik confesses, softly.

Kilgrave hardens so fast his eyes water with it, cock pressing against his jeans. Erik floods into his awareness unexpectedly. Unseen, he’s taken the helmet off. Kilgrave shudders as the rings expand. Confused, he holds utterly still.   It feels like there’s a ghostly mouth on his dick, warm wetness, impossible constriction, when Kilgrave knows for a fact there’s none.

Erik loosens his grip a fraction, grabbing a fistful of hair instead, and then fucks his throat.

Kilgrave’s hips jerk – fucking the air in situ - chasing the same sensation as his mouth drags over and over Erik’s length. Kilgrave curls his tongue and they both gasp. Erik taught him what he likes but he can feel it now, how much pressure and where to apply it, when to swallow, ease up, how to unravel Erik from the inside out. “You’re so perfect like this,” Erik repeats, smiling. Experimentally, Kilgrave sucks him. The shared sensation rebounds and Kilgrave tucks, his cockhead twitching frantically in his jeans. Laughing breathlessly, Erik takes over. He holds Kilgrave by the ears and jackhammers his hips. Kilgrave flounders; sucking hard and being sucked; all of his neurons trip-wired wrong. Kilgrave comes groaning in his own pants the same moment Erik does, confused and hopelessly turned on, a wet patch staining his crotch.

Kilgrave gulps air around the dick in his mouth, feeling the after tremors run through Erik’s frame as he slumps. He’s still keeping Kilgrave pressed to his groin, gagged on softening cock, his hands on Kilgrave’s cheekbones, his ears, are gentle.

Slowly, Erik replaces the helmet, his features softer, his eyes bright. Bereft, Kilgrave chokes back the protest. He nurses Erik until he’s gone small, and then dazed, takes his mouth away. Kilgrave stays on his knees, forehead pressing against the other man’s belly until Erik grabs a fistful of his vest and jerks him upright. Off-balance, Kilgrave plasters himself against Erik, flush to his torso and declares, urgently: “I’m riding you into the mattress tonight.” Because it’s a fucking brilliant idea: if he pins Erik to the bed, if he sits on his lap, forces himself open on Erik’s dick, if Kilgrave rides Erik there won’t be any friction on his rings, he can come like that, untouched, perfectly painless. “I want to ride you, please?”

He’s never had to ask for sex before.

He can’t feel Erik, secluded behind the helmet, but Erik’s voice is all sorts of genuine, his smile warm when he answers: “Voracious.”

They hurt everyone who stands in their way. Together, with their combination of powers, they’re unstoppable. Kilgrave questions Lieutenant Dawson with semen staining the front of his jeans, smelling like spunk. He doesn’t care. He’s not embarrassed in the least.

“General Maurice: retired,” Dawson whispers. There’s a combat knife protruding from each thigh, Erik hasn’t waited, he started torturing the man even as Kilgrave spoke to Dawson reasonably. “He was the fore-runner, he ran a team back in the nineteen-eighties, they nicked mutant kids, thirteen of them.”

At night, he pins Erik to the bed by his wrists. He sits flush on the cradle of Erik’s hips. Hands braced on the hard muscle of Erik’s belly, he works himself open on dick, too fast and too quick, as if trying to hurt them both. He’s gagged, Erik’s helmet is off, but Kilgrave’s in control of the pace. His cock is curled tight against his stomach; the rings gleam as he bounces. He prefers being on top; being on top is a step below being in heaven, heavy lidded, he arches his back to hit the prostate with each falling stab. He’s in control.

Lazily, Erik allows it.

 

 

 

 

&&

 

Sometimes, he still uses the helmet to jerk off, when he’s deep in his refractory period Erik will remove it and then touch the other man, using oil, the lightest of caresses. He’s careful, fingers running over the scar tissue where a ring once lay, in and around the remaining copper, over dead zones where there’s little to no sensation. He’ll do it for hours, just to watch Kilgrave go hushed and dark-eyed. Erik will touch him until he’s semi-flaccid, until the expression on Kilgrave’s face goes from hopeful yearning to frustration, to a mindless torment. He never makes it fully erect on his own, not when half of all available sensation was taken from him.

Knowing that, _seeing_ it, turns Erik on; knowing Kilgrave’s dependent can make him coil with a sinful triumph.

Fascinated, he’ll touch Kilgrave around the rings, over and over until Erik is hard again, and then he’ll push his cock inside, into sloppy seconds and warm heat. Played with for hours, fully erect at the same time Erik went hard, Kilgrave will finally come, at the first deep thrust Erik delivers.

He wants the gag gone, the helmet too – Erik wasn’t lying about either of those things - but he’s wavering on the sense of timing, trying to judge it to perfection, for the first time in his life, he wishes he had Charles’ insight, to take a peek inside someone’s skull and know for certain. He can’t risk putting away the tools of his trade prematurely. Erik can’t risk losing this.

Erik wants the tongue stud like air but he won’t force it by his own hand - from Kilgrave’s perspective, it has to come voluntarily - the last spark of rebellion smothered out. Kilgrave will smile with a callous charm, with murder in his voice, but he slants toward Erik like a plant yearning the sun, his tolerance for the gag as threadbare as Erik’s.

He’ll say yes soon, Erik’s aware; he’ll see the stud as a mark of ownership not of theft; he’ll say yes because they both want it. If there’s a trick to breaking someone: then the hardest, most dangerous step, is knowing at what point to trust.

Erik _will,_ once the stud is in place.

According to Charles, trusting wasn’t Erik’s strongest trait.

_You do more damage than you know old friend, trying to hold onto everything so tightly._


	6. Chapter 6

“Maybe it was an accident?” Kilgrave muses.

“Killing all the telepaths? I doubt it.”

“I think initially, most discoveries in science are made by accident. What about you, General, do you think it was intentional? Tell me the truth, who were you collecting those children for, back in the eighties? Who designed the contagion?”

“Albert and Louise Thompson,” General Maurice says helpfully.

A pin-drop could be heard in the ensuing silence. Kilgrave stutters like a silent film.

“Do you have their address?” Erik reminds, until Kilgrave repeats it for their audience.

Maurice rattles off Louise’s house number and street – in London – of all places and nudges the glasses up his nose. He’s in his eighties, wisps of grey hair combed across his skull, eyes a rheumy hazel. He still stands with ramrod straightness.

“What about Albert?”

Maurice purses his lips, stares upward at the ceiling as if the answers are written on the cornices. “He and Louise parted ways, and I never kept in contact with Albert. Shame, they stayed together for so long those two. Couples are always divorcing nowadays, whatever was keeping them together just…went away, I suppose. He’s still in New York, working on a project, I believe. I don’t know the specifics, or his address, Louise never said.”

“Anything else you should tell me?”

“People are starting to notice,” Maurice stutters. He looks pointedly at Erik. “People recognise your methods, Magneto, some of us were around in the sixties.”

Kilgrave moves aside, makes room for Erik as he stalks forward.

 

 

&&

 

 

Louise Thompson is in her late sixties, hair lank and stringy, one side of her features melted. They find Louise on the way to work, stepping out of her front door with an ID card in hand.

Kilgrave hasn’t seen her since he told Louise to hold the iron to her face. His parents ran away from home the same night. It’s weird seeing her now. “Don’t run, mother,” he warns, honestly delighted. “We have so much to catch up on.”

“Kevin?” she gasps. “Oh, god, _Kevin.”_ If he got his full – and _fantastic_ – head of hair from his father, Kilgrave suspects he got his acting skills from her.

“Surprise!” he mocks.

Louise locks gazes with Erik and straightens. “Magneto. I saw what you did in Cuba.” She doesn’t sound afraid. His mother always had bigger balls than the men in her life.

“I have some questions for you, mother, personal ones, that have been –oh I don’t know – _bugging_ me for quite some time.”

“I’ll answer any question you ask,” Louise says, unevenly.

“Never in doubt.”

“But privately. You’re my son. Give me that, please.” She makes a sweeping gesture, as if to say come inside.

Erik shakes his head. He went spotting the previous morning, found a building ten kilometres away. They take her to a derelict factory, hidden, so Erik can work in peace.   Together they sit on the dirty step, mother and son, a private chat as per her dying wish. Dust motes stir in a beam of sunlight; Kilgrave turns the D-ring over in his hand. He’s kept it since Erik pressed it into his palm, although he couldn’t say why.

“Your son,” Kilgrave parrots. “It never actually felt like I was your son. You never touched me in ten years. I was a child, was affection beyond you?”

Louise rounds on him, face flushing angrily. “All your life, you forced yourself on everyone! I attended those meetings in New York! I was there with Jessica’s support group. I heard first-hand what you had done!” Louise’s hands are folded in her lap, blue-veined with age. “You were an abomination when you were born, with that mutant gene, with your impossible moods, you’re an abomination now!” There are tears in her eyes, her passion so strong. From across the room, Erik looks over quickly, then paces away. “All those stories I heard, Kevin, all those people, those lives, you destroyed for no reason.”

Kilgrave turns the ring over – he was never hers – and turns it over again. “Tell me about CHX-1.” He says flatly, knowing Erik’s questions by route.

“Kevin…Kevin, I know you don’t believe it, but I was trying to help. It wasn’t meant to be a contagion.   It was meant to kill the mutant gene. We had fourteen children to extrapolate from and we thought it worked, for a time. You quieted; you weren’t so unreasonable! But then you pushed back with compulsion, so strong, you came at us with no morality. No love!”

It’s a version of events, he supposes, no better or worse than another’s. “You’re the original creator?”

“Other scientists used the serum we created, made adjustments to it, turned it into something else. Every discovery in science is made by mistake. I don’t know who those people are, but our intentions were good.”

Kilgrave glances at Erik, lowers his voice a fraction. “Why isn’t Dad with you?”

“We separated, after we knew we were safe. We only stayed together because we were afraid. He remained in New York.” Louise squirms, eyes lowering. “Working on a project.”

“Who for?”

“Jeri Hogarth,” Louise breathes.

It takes effort to keep his expression still, to not react, draw Erik’s attention. “Why would Dad work for Jeri Hogarth?”

“She found me at the meeting, after you…left. Hogarth had the remains of an aborted foetus, yours and Hope Schlottman’s child. Hogarth wants to replicate your power, make it…steadier. Albert was intrigued,” her face twists with disgust. “He should know better.”

Kilgrave blinks, blinks again. “I don’t know if Hogarth’s pragmatic or horrifying.” He thinks about it, turns the idea over in his head. “Pragmatic,” he decides. Kilgrave’s careful saying the name; he hasn’t thought about her for so long. “And does Jess know?”

“About the abortion, yes, Jessica arranged it on Hope’s behalf. About Jeri’s experiment, no.” His mother is gasping as the words tumble out, forced from her mouth and into the open.

“Refreshing isn’t it, telling the truth. Louise, is there anything _else_ I should know?” because that’s a startling amount of information to digest in one bout.

Louise looks directly at Erik.  “At the last support meeting held, Jessica came to tell us it was over. She said we were safe. She said Erik agreed to kill you.”

It lands like a brick; like the foundation of a solid wall.

Kilgrave recoils, curling toward Erik, because that’s where he goes when hurt unexpectedly. Erik paces on the other side of the building, helmet on, and Louise pulses nothing but compelled honesty. Kilgrave’s not a telepath; he can’t pluck the memory into existence from Erik’s mind and confirm it. The only thing he knows for certain is that Louise is not lying and the only thing he knows for a fact is that Erik doesn’t lie either.

Erik will kill him.

Everything Erik’s ever said has been an immutable fact. His world is tilting off kilter; it feels as if there’s a band around his chest. “He told Jessica this?”

“Jessica said he swore it. You know Jess wouldn’t have let you go, otherwise. It was an agreed deal.” Louise’s lip curls, she adds, with a mother’s murderous insight. “Magneto’s only doing what he’s always done, Kevin; using the available _tools_. No one’s ever wanted _you_ \- only falsely – or for your gifts, you should be accustomed to that.”

The hair on his arms is standing on end, like a static charge. Erik is going to kill him. Erik gave his word to kill him. Kilgrave _knew_ this once - in a hotel near the airport, staring at a clock - he had known it for a fact. The story could only end in one of two ways: he escaped before the list was completed, or Erik would finish him when it was done.

It was so long ago it seems unreal. But he had known it before things got muddied between them.

His heart is pounding. He turns the ring over and over. It was a ring, transformed from a sound that was shoved down his cock; it was a bullet, fired with intent, in a time when Kilgrave had known what needed to be done. Kilgrave feels like he’s waking from a stupor, a story of rotten pages, overwritten by a child’s fantasy, some kind of belief in a happy ending.

He puts the copper D-ring down, carefully, on the floor.

He didn’t survive the facility, didn’t become so proficient at compulsion, to give up and fucking _die._

He didn’t suffer all of that to bend his neck and quit.

There are two ways to survive captivity – accept it – or fight it. Outside, at the very edge of Kilgrave’s range, there’s a growing sense of anticipation, of people, gathered. Erik hasn’t noticed. Erik is still pacing, ill at ease. Curiously, Kilgrave tilts his head “Are you wearing a tracker?”

_"_ Yes,” she says, despairingly. “I thought you were dead. I didn’t know you’d be here. I thought this plan would work, I knew he would come. Someone has to stop him. Someone has to stop you all. He’d have come for me eventually.”

“Brave ol’ mum, dangling herself as bait. Are the people outside contracted security, or are they government?”

“Contracted.” 

Kilgrave had used those type of teams in New York, against Jessica.

“He’s going to hurt you,” Kilgrave says, dully. “It’s what he does. Erik will skin you alive.”

Her expression wavers, falls into terror, Louise flounders for his arm. “Tell me it won’t hurt,” she says, desperately. “Please, Kevin, _tell_ me it won’t hurt.”

He doesn’t know why he should – no one’s ever spared him anything. Kilgrave plucks the ID badge from her lapel, name and photo I.D, and snaps the metal clip off. “Don’t tell Erik what you said.”    

He makes his body boneless, his smile playful as he approaches his captor, acting his little heart out. “She’s all yours.”

“Are you alright?” Erik demands bluntly. He curls a hand around Kilgrave’s nape, over the needle scars of childhood, brings their foreheads close.

Kilgrave’s heart thumps, too loud. He covers: “Fell into her. Just for a bit.”

Erik passes the gag over instantly, hand at his helmet, readying to take it off.

“She’s family, she’s my DNA.” Kilgrave turns the gag around in his hand, the same way he had turned the ring, making himself look at it for what it really is.

“She’s my _mother_ , Erik, focussing on her takes no effort at all, I think I’d slip into her even if you took the helmet off. Please,” Kilgrave says guilelessly, the lie smooth as honey. “I don’t want to _feel_ this one, not if you’re going to torture her.” He’s never felt his mother – there’s never been any kind of connection between them that was worthwhile - but Erik doesn’t need to know that.  

Erik’s face has darkened, displeasure rising like a shroud as Kilgrave spoke. _I’m going to enjoy it_ , his entire body language reads, _killing her slow._

“Mutants are easier to focus on,” Erik argues. “It’s what Charles always said, and you know how to find me the easiest, you always know how to find me first. Stay here. Just focus, here, on me.”

“Would you want to witness your mother’s death?” Kilgrave shoots back. Erik straightens. His hands clench into a knotted fist. At his heart, Kilgrave’s never loved anyone but himself, but that isn’t true for Erik. This could be his best chance at escape. “I’m not Charles. Can I go somewhere else, just this once? Regardless of what she’s done, she’s my family.”

“Not any more.” Erik bites out. He looks once between Kilgrave and Louise, then relents, jerks his head roughly toward the exit. They stop at the cavernous entry to the factory, still within eyesight of Louise, faces in the dark, toes over the streak of sunlight. “Here?”

Kilgrave grimaces. “You keep pushing me to increase my range.   Can I wait in the car?”

“You’ll be out of sight. It’s daylight.” Unhappily, Erik’s brow furrows.

Everybody relaxes eventually, Kilgrave reminds himself, even Erik. “Throw me in the boot, if you want. I’ll wear the gag, I’ll be out of sight of anyone who walks by, and you can take the helmet off. Just don’t leave me in there forever.”

Erik’s never liked having a discernible space between them. It’s grown further in the last few weeks, but Erik’s uneasy unless he knows Kilgrave is secure. It should have been the biggest clue, Kilgrave supposes, at how little trust Erik demonstrated. Even now, he hasn’t taken away the tools of his trade – gag and helmet part of their everyday routine – even now, he doesn’t think of Kilgrave as anything but a prisoner, someone to be used, for want of a good tool.

Kilgrave had just…grown blind to it. Stupidly blind.

“Okay.” Erik concedes.

Kilgrave walks out into the open with the gag in his mouth, Louise’s plastic ID tucked away in his pocket, and with both hands clasped behind his back. He strolls outside like a general - in that peculiar style of walk, when officers inspect paraded troops - or like a prisoner, with his hands leashed, being led to his doom.  

When Erik opens the boot, Kilgrave folds inside gracefully. Out of sight, he stretches all four limbs and nods. Erik hesitates for a beat; he looks like he’s on the cusp of saying something but shakes it off.

Erik takes his helmet off, clamped under his armpit, and slams the door shut. It’s a routine, Erik’s routine; gag goes in, helmet comes off, regular as clockwork. They’ve been doing it for months now.

Kilgrave relaxes a fraction, his heart stuttering with adrenalin.

He listens as the other man walks away. Kilgrave tugs his mother’s ID from his pocket. He cuts his palm open on the plastic and smears blood over the photograph, over the name. Thompson, it reads, Carver Genetics, science division.

Kilgrave waits five, ten, fifteen minutes. He knows they’re there. He’s range is pitiful, so if he can sense them, they have to be within view-line. It’s a gamble, but Kilgrave spent his entire life erasing all evidence of himself, nobody knew he existed except for Jessica and Erik.

These people his mother employed, they’re not here for Kilgrave. They’re here for Erik.

When the boot is pried open, there’ s a soldier in a ski mask on the opposite side of a plastic gun.

Kilgrave babbles. He rocks his shoulders side to side, eyes wide. “Ssh. Sir, it’s alright, we’re going to get you out, but you need to remain quiet until you clear the area.”

Kilgrave, determined, garbles louder, bulges his eyes, and jerks his head at the factory three times. “Cut the gag,” a second soldier says. “Let’s hear what he has to say.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Kilgrave spits, exasperated. “What took you so long?”

 

 

&&

 

 

He doesn’t cut and run. Kilgrave still doesn’t know the full extent of Erik’s range.   He wants to – oh god, he wants to - Kilgrave physically has to fight the nausea down, but there’s no point scarpering for the highlands if Erik drags him back, bodily, by the cock-rings.

Kilgrave made a promise in a cell – a lifetime ago – he meant it then, and he can’t afford to waver now.

Erik’s utterly focused on flaying Kilgrave’s mother, jealousy and disquiet run through him in equal measure, an undertone of sorrow Kilgrave can’t decipher. It can’t be for Louise, surely? Erik’s own mother?    Kilgrave’s not a telepath but he’s a solid wall of fear when he creeps into the factory, the soldiers with their plastic guns coming along with him from all angles. Something messy is suspended mid-air, dripping blood, and standing below her Erik’s face is savage with conflict.

Kilgrave feels his mouth curl, feels the same emotion sweep over him, and lets the hate bolster him.

“Erik, don’t use your power!” he shouts, in one blindingly fast rush. “Hold! Everyone stay still!”

They freeze like a still picture image – click, photo taken – and Erik, too. Kilgrave freezes as well, waiting for metal to tear into him but…nothing happens.

Startled, he starts to grin. Safe, Kilgrave thinks, disbelievingly, he’s actually safe, ten months of torture and captivity and he’s out the other side. The rings don’t move, tighten, or cut him into ribbons. The soldiers don’t move. _Erik_ doesn’t move. The euphoria is a bright bubble, it fires up from inside. For the first time since being drugged in New York city, Kilgrave is in control.  

Laughing, he trips down the stairs.

Like a hurricane, anger blasts through him; lashed onward by a devil wind. Erik stands utterly still. Kilgrave, on the upper level, snarls murderously. “Every soldier with a weapon bared, put a bullet in your mouth!”

And he’s thirty-five years old, held prisoner inside a plastic cell in the 1960s, or he’s fourteen years old, running from a penthouse with soldiers on his heel. He hates them. _They_ hate them. It’s the one and the same, terrible, twinned, rage. Kilgrave is nearly deaf when the gunfire stops. He’s misted in blood. It covers one entire side of his face.

“Oops,” he says, aloud.

The man who cut Kilgrave’s gag free, stands alive and well, the smell of his shit fouling the air.

Kilgrave takes the gun from the man’s holster and advances. The white- hot anger is like a firecracker, the sense of doubled betrayal takes his breath away.   He’s going to kill him. He’s going to tear Erik to shreds ( _with metal_ ) he’s going to make him scream ( _for bringing the soldiers here_ ) he’s going to make him pay for every lie he told ( _every lie he told_ ). “I’m going to kill you,” Kilgrave says, aloud.

Erik’s eyes widen, bright with a lightning bolt. He glances at the dead bodies all around them. His face becomes strategic, almost remote.

Kilgrave can see the struggle in his muscles, fighting the compulsion, when Erik spits out. “No. You’re going to _hurt_ me.”

Kilgrave’s anger twists from pure white into something monstrously dark, malicious. He wants to, god he wants to, make Erik scream for everything he put Kilgrave through. His gun dips a fraction, considering it - hurting instead of killing – and yes, yes he wants to, he feels…

…relief?????

“Oh,” Kilgrave says, with dawning realisation, and stares at his lowered gun. He knows the steel trap of Erik’s mind, but still has difficulty separating which emotion belongs to who. He doesn’t know if he wants to laugh or cry but Jesus –  “Applause for the brass balls, Erik. Tell me, are you _still_ trying to control me?”

“Yes,” Erik admits, instantly, and then his eyes flash. He snarls at the lost advantage, such as it was.

Smiling, Kilgrave commiserates. “Sucks doesn’t it, being helpless, without any control? Tell you what, Erik, how about we do both, hurt _and_ kill?   Go down onto your hands and knees.”

The betrayal is pounding like a pulse-beat; the anger just as loud. _He was going to kill me_ , comes in stereo.

Even like this, Erik is more graceful than Kilgrave ever managed. He falls, glacial as an ice-shelf sloughing off the Antarctic. Kilgrave spent hours between Erik’s legs, worshipping him, at peace. Kilgrave spent entire lifetimes screaming, had his body and mind altered because of Erik. It’s easy, holding onto his rage, it’s starting to feel like a solid wall.

Kilgrave closes the distance; he stops a few feet from the helmet and picks it up. “Tell me, can this be destroyed?”

“No,” Erik grates out.

“Thrown into the fires of Mordor; something as effective but less dramatic?”

“No. You’re an empath, barely trained. What happens if you lose concentration? You’ll _need_ its protection.”

“You mean you can _find_ me with it,” Kilgrave corrects, harshly.

“Yes.”

“Whatsyername,” Kilgrave calls to the soldier. “Take this, go as far away as you can and hide it. In nine hours, find the nearest knife and slit your own throat. Understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good, lad.” Kilgrave studies Erik, the anger sizzling through him. All the promises he made to himself, all the things Erik put him through. Jessica had it right; the only way to survive extended captivity, is to hold onto the rage. “Tell me, how far can you sense these rings?”

“Anywhere in the world.”

Kilgrave drops into a squat, so he’s eye to eye with Erik. Privately, he’s startled. He’d assumed Erik exaggerated the length of his reach. “You weren’t lying?”

“I don’t lie,” Erik grits out.

Pained, it ripples through him – the knowledge that promises were made to Jessica, and for Kilgrave, there’d been the continued gag – Erik was his maker, yet every deity kills. “I know it,” Kilgrave confirms.

He doesn’t know what his expression says, or what Erik reads into it, but the malice running from him changes note. When Erik speaks, it’s the closest thing to a plea Kilgrave’s ever heard: “Kevin, wait. What did she _say_ to you?”  

“She told me the truth,” Kilgrave says, dismissively, Erik was going to discard him when it was done. “In fifty minutes from now, when I’m far enough away I can’t feel it, you are going to use your power for one thing, and one thing only.

_You can go fuck yourself._

Do it for nine hours, stay on your hands and knees, and examine your intentions, Erik. After nine hours, I’ll give you a choice. If you have any intention, any intention at all, of coming after me, pick up the nearest revolver and put a bullet in your mouth.

If you’re content to call it even, if you can continue your hunt for the politicians and let me go, then you can leave this place.” Kilgrave hunkers down, hand under Erik’s chin, raising his head. “Choose carefully, yeah? And let’s hope no one walks in and finds you like that: the great Magneto, on his hands and knees, being intimate with a metal pole.”

Erik’s rage trebles and it’s Kilgrave’s rage too; they share everything.

Kilgrave tilts forward and kisses Erik slow, exploratory. For the first time, there’s no helmet or gag between them, no kind of barrier at all, just smooth cheeks, lips, and tongue. It’s perfect. It’s how Kilgrave fantasized about kissing Erik for weeks now.

Erik’s taste is achingly familiar.

Kilgrave was raised in a facility, and when he escaped, he ran wild. He never had a place of his own, he never looked twice at anyone until he met Jessica. He wouldn’t recognise the etchings of a home if they were carved into him.

It’s a slow kiss, open-mouthed, and wet. When Kilgrave pulls away, Erik’s teeth slam shut, catching the tip of Kilgrave’s tongue where a stud might lay.  

“You wish,” Kilgrave laughs, and darts away.

Erik’s eyes glitter. Kilgrave lays a hand at Erik’s waist, under his t-shirt, against warm skin, and unbuttons his jeans, pulls the denim and Erik’s underwear down. He slaps Erik’s ass once, mockingly, and walks out the door.

 

 

&&

 

 

 

Erik rages. He storms through the first twenty minutes, is homicidal by the mark of forty. There are no ropes or ties, there’s nothing keeping Erik bound, on his hands and knees - nothing _tangible_ \- except Kilgrave’s indomitable will.

Erik had never been subjected to it before. Kilgrave’s compulsion is as strong as anything Charles threw, stronger, Erik thinks. He’s in a blind fury because he relaxed, let his guard down, and the betrayal of it chokes him, rage snapping like a live wire. He has no one to blame but himself. Jessica warned Erik, she said Kilgrave couldn’t be used.

Erik pants.   He stares at the blood spilling across the floor, at Mrs. Thompson, discarded on the ground when Erik’s power had cut off, his ability taken beyond his reach. Erik’s never felt compulsion directly. Kilgrave was caged from the moment Erik met him, and if he opened the door wide, let him out, Erik made sure Kilgrave was leashed and muzzled first.

Whatever conversation occurred between Louise and her son – whatever made that expression cross Kilgrave’s face, whatever made him doubt Erik - she’s taken it to her grave. He didn’t kill her slow enough, Erik fumes, he shouldn’t have left them alone together. Erik never had any kind of resolution with his own mother, she was taken too fast, but Louise undid ten months of impossible work with a single conversation.

Erik wants to skin her all over again.

The only advantage he has is that he swayed Kilgrave from killing him outright.  Erik can walk away from pain, hurt, anything, except a plastic bullet to the brain.

He can’t feel the rings, or his helmet; he doesn’t know which direction either possession fled. In ten minutes though, something is going to change. Jessica was right: Erik is perfectly aware in his own head, is fully cognisant of the absoluteness of Kilgrave’s control. In ten minutes from now, there will be one task Erik has to perform, and he’ll do it until he’s torn bloody. That’s a fact.

Erik blinks sweat from his eye, and tries to remember the things Jessica had said.

You’re compelled to do whatever he says, but sometimes, if you can think outside of the box, you can get around it.

Fuck yourself for nine hours is pretty straightforward, and if that’s Kilgrave’s idea of agonising torment, then it’s laughable. Erik was being kind when he used women, he was being restrained – when Erik catches him, Erik’s going to denude the hair from Kilgrave’s groin. Kilgrave – his concept of pain - is _prepubescent_ compared to Erik.  

Erik won’t hold back.   Next time, he’ll lay hands, personally.

Erik has three minutes before his power kicks in, and he tries to quieten the lashings of black anger. He needs to get away from this circular train of thought and fix another in his head – he’s going to fuck himself in two minutes – he’s going to fuck himself with something small. Small, he repeats, small.   He needs to hold the thought when the compulsion sweeps through him.

One minute. Fuck himself with something small.

He loses the thought, burned away by a wildfire, and Erik shouts when something batters into him, knocking Erik onto his elbows. Small, he thinks loudly, small, he’s fucking himself with something small.

Erik gets his hands under him again – it has to be hands and knees - groaning at the tear, the feel of blood. Smaller than that, Erik snarls: smaller, smaller until it’s the size of a toothbrush, the size of a toothpick. It’s relentless, see-sawing into him like a machine, but it tapers into thinness obediently, goes long and narrow instead.

Erik twitches, body slick with sweat, with the shock of it.

He tries to access his power for something other than fucking, but it’s locked away, and his anger flares again. It doesn’t matter if it’s small, so long as he does it, and _only_ that for nine hours.

He seethes.

He spends it alternating between anger, and plotting vengeance, his list of punishments going from sub-dermal piercing in the palate, (a lip-ring won’t hold against the amount of screaming Kilgrave will be doing) to ball-crushers, A-frames. Erik will fuck Kilgrave’s mouth, so he can feel the tongue studs running across his cock.   He’s going to string Kilgrave up by the wrists, nail his flighty feet to the floor. Erik will carve a message into his skin from armpit to hipbone, his knife skipping down each rib. Erik will leave him bent over in a sling, with his feet nailed to the wooden floorboards of Hellfire.

Compulsion is rare, empaths rarer, he’ll be a ticketed item. Kilgrave will be flickering all night, coming as frequently as the customers do, coming dry. Erik will watch as he’s fucked from both ends, and when Erik drags him away to a private room with private equipment to be used, Kilgrave won’t leave. He won’t dare leave Erik, not ever again.

Kilgrave only had three rules to obey: don’t speak unless told, do as I say, and tell the truth, _always tell the truth_.   He broke all three – and took his last conversation with Louise with him.

It’s a way to pass time, Erik supposes, this list of dark fantasies that may or may not occur; until then, Erik is stuck.

By eight hours even the slight in/out motion of something so minuscule is dragging on Erik’s nerve-endings. His spine is on fire. He’s knees scream in protest. He’s been thinking about vengeance non-stop and with a start, Erik realizes he’s going to have a serious problem in another hour.

There are dead bodies all around, every single soldier followed Kilgrave’s command, the smell of blood only reinforces what ‘put a bullet in your mouth’ actually means.

_I won’t hurt you,_ Erik had said, and he didn’t, the whores did that. Erik was simply keeping his word to not touch Kilgrave, not even the rings, and so he could argue he was true.

_I’ll kill him when I’m done,_ Erik had said to Jessica, and the promise cost him nothing. Erik knew from the moment Miranda announced ‘empath’, that he’d never be done with Kilgrave.

_What’s it feel like?_ Kilgrave had asked – Erik answered ‘ _an irritation.’_ It’s a perfectly accurate description for a foreign presence not organic to its surroundings; otherness or buzz worked just as fine. Erik might as well have answered: “It feels like I’m not alone.”

Language isn’t precise, or there’s room for interpretation, and if Kilgrave was careful with his choice of words regarding Jessica, then Erik is downright canny.   Unless he finds another way to circumvent Kilgrave’s order, Erik will be lying beside those corpses in an hour. I won’t let you go - from Erik’s perspective, it only had one emotional resonance.

Put a bullet in your mouth. Put a bullet in your mouth.

So Erik does.

 

 

 

 

&&

 

Kilgrave runs from England to Germany, has the rings professionally removed, and drops every item of clothing from his body. He bins it and redresses in sporting attire.

He’s on a flight to South Africa at the exact time Erik grabs the nearest gun, dismantles the clip, and forces a bullet into his mouth, holding it between his teeth as he clambers to his feet.

 

&&

 

 

Erik has to take a skip out to recover his helmet, sunk on the bottom of the Thames. He finds the rings in a hardcore bdsm shop in Germany, the copper cut at both ends of the arch, the penetrative bar removed. Erik plucks them out of the bio-waste bin at the back of the shop, reforms the bullet, and kills the owner, who had mistakenly removed them. He doesn’t look for security footage. It would be a waste of Erik’s time.

The place Charles had carved into him is silent, a dead zone.

Erik stands on the streets of Dusseldorf, the scarf whipping around his throat, the sense of peace he’s established this last year stolen from him.

 

 

&&

 

 

If surviving captivity is about having the moral backbone to say ‘what you are doing is wrong,’ to be angry about it, and to remain so like Jessica, then Kilgrave walks away from Great Britain – from Erik – in a simmering ball of confusion. His moral fibre had never been as sturdy as hers.

For every step forward, there’s a gossamer thread inside of Kilgrave that pulls taut. He wants to take three steps backward, to return to Erik; it takes concentration, force of will, to ignore it.

He arrives in Mauritius dressed in tracksuit pants, t-shirt, and a hoodie. Kilgrave’s wearing free-style runners, no metal eyelets for the laces, and he’s carrying Charles Xavier’s book in one hand. He has no other belongings on his frame.

He takes a rental shack on the coastline, where the aqua ocean meets the bone-white sand, and there’re no people to be found for miles. He sleeps. For the first week, he sleeps for an age.

Kilgrave has no servants. He makes his own meals, seafood and risottos, things that Erik taught him. He travels the circuit from shack to beach, to the low-risen pier stuck in the water, where he’ll lie on his back, one foot trailing idle patterns through the sea.

There’s something pried open, bruised, inside his mind.

In solitude, he starts laying down a new wall, one laden brick at a time. Kilgrave doesn’t talk to anyone or go to market. He has supplies delivered once a fortnight. He tenses sometimes, alien emotion at the edges of his awareness, but they never come too close - children, frolicking on the beach - or an early morning walker with a yappy mongrel, the dog nipping at the waves as they roll in.

Bare-chested, the freckles on Kilgrave’s shoulders start to darken. His skin goes olive brown. He wears linen shorts, and grows his beard in, dark and full across the cheeks. His fringe grows long, flopping over one eye. In the sun, hesitantly, Kilgrave touches himself.

He runs an exploratory hand over and over. The underside of his cock is a warzone, thick with jagged white lines, scar tissue; the front un-marred. His anatomy is divided between no sensation at all, and too much sensation; the remaining nerve endings feel twice as potent. He doesn’t have a sex drive, doesn’t feel much of anything, but Kilgrave uses oil, jerks himself off in the ways he once cherished.

He keeps his eyes closed, shell-conch pink bleeding through where the sun beats down. He keeps his touch gentle. He fists himself, smoothly, while nothing happens.

Kilgrave changes the tempo, strips his cock, quick and effectively. He fills out a little, becomes distended, but the dark zones outnumber the sparks of pleasure. He keeps at it until his wrist is sore. In a last ditch effort; Kilgrave drives his nail into his nipple, trying to fill up the no-sensation with an alternative.

The jolt of pain arrows straight to his cock.

Kilgrave arches.

He tries it again, panting, raking at himself, twisting his nipple hard. Kilgrave thinks, frustrated, if he can just intensify the hurt, let it hit those high notes when it blurs in with the pleasure, if he just hurts himself a little bit more…and freezes, open mouthed, gasping.

Erik’s teeth are at his throat.

He lets his fist unclench. He takes his hand away. Kilgrave doesn’t come; re-hardwired, his responses aren’t the same as they were a year ago – there’s someone missing, the intensity wrong. He doesn’t get fully erect. Eyes shut; he rolls off the pier, belly flops into the clear water, and dives down, skimming over the coral sand like a shark.

Sometimes he wants to ask why? Mostly, he thinks what’s the point? Kilgrave never had a satisfactory answer for any of the people he decided to hurt or kill.

Kilgrave would have allowed the stud, if Erik had asked again. Kilgrave wanted to please Erik, but there’s a gap between emotion and dialogue, like the static of a dead zone, and asking why doesn’t change the outcome.

He misses Erik fiercely, like a chunk has been carved from him; then the rage cycles through, the betrayal, and it’s all too fucking emotive for Kilgrave’s liking. He won’t die. He refuses to die. His survival instinct is too strong, and the only person he’s ever loved is himself.

He reads the papers, follows world news, looking for Erik in crumpled stadiums, or inexplicable car accidents, in murders poorly disguised. He finds Erik sometimes, in between the printed lines of an editorial, with Pedro Javier in Spain, aged forty-seven, a Carver genetics genius who died from lead poisoning.

Kilgrave spends a long couple of months on that beach, healing, with the palm trees swaying overhead, the endless reach of the sky reassuring.

Lazily, a day at a time, Kilgrave comes back to himself.

On a Tuesday afternoon, Kilgrave dusts the sand off his butt and makes preparations.   He let this happen, from the moment he was caught until the instant he escaped, this was the path he walked.  He won’t allow it to occur again – he can’t be captured a third time - he needs to be stronger than this, he needs to be much stronger.

If Charles can use Cerebro and cheat, if he can touch the entire world with technology – then Kilgrave is going after Albert.

 

&&

 

 

 

“Hello, Dad,” he greets. “I think it’s time I moved past my limitations.”

There’s a Petri dish with half of his genetics on it, Kilgrave never wanted children (a moot point now), but he wants his offspring’s remains.

In New York, Albert backs away from the door, his eyes frightened.  “How did you find me?”

“Jeri Hogarth. I’m afraid she couldn’t make it, Jeri had a bus she needed to meet.” Kilgrave rubs his hands together. “I hear you have a project, Dad, that sounds terribly exciting.”

Albert reverses course until he strikes the edge of the kitchen table. He has none of Louise’s fearless dogma, terror coming off him in a physical wave.

“Tell me, did my child have the mutant gene, the same gift as me?”

“We can’t tell for sure, it was too early, but the signposts are similar.”

If Erik wanted to know who had the scientific knowledge to distinguish one type of skill from another – say a telepath from a teleporter – then he should have met Albert Thompson. But that isn’t Kilgrave’s concern anymore, or even why he’s in the city. Kilgrave won’t be recaptured, or held in a cell, not ever again.

He can adapt, change, he can cheat just as effectively as Charles did. And if he can’t touch the world, he will settle for having his voice run through microphones, telephones, or any other kind of technology.

“I can’t do it,” Albert moans, when Kilgrave explains what he wants.

“You’d better. To be honest, you might not survive my disappointment if you can’t.”

In Jessica’s city, Kilgrave is irritable and paranoid, like every other local.

He takes his father, his research, his mudslide, and goes for the tallest building with a view. Penthouse on the top floor, please, where everybody below appears like ants. He’s not _safe_ in New York, it’s worse than London, and he doesn’t have a helmet or a safe harbor to go to, only his anger as a solid barricade. He secludes himself in a room, helps Albert as needed, and doesn’t bring anyone else into it.

He sees Jessica on every street corner, black hair streaming behind her, the peculiar gait she walked by. New York is where she captured him, and he realises with a start it’s been almost a year to the day.

He has no intention of being showy in Jessica’s hometown. He can’t chance running into her; or other people. More alarmingly, New York is overflowing with metal; it’s everywhere, and Kilgrave’s aware of it now – hyper-alert, in the same way he notices cameras – it puts him on constant edge. He misses the beach, his solitude and the quiet; he misses Mauritius.

Kilgrave will return to his shack the moment the deck is stacked in his favour, after dear old Dad is taken care of.

In New York, Kilgrave doesn’t look at women; the immediate association is not pleasant. They walk past in streams, all shapes and sizes, smiling and serious, preoccupied or harassed.   They were mayflies once, there and gone; he never dwelled on any of them, never stayed with anyone, until he met Jessica. He doesn’t so much as look at them twice.

Kilgrave knows he’s not an unattractive male, and that with all the women he bedded, _some_ must have desired him, even before Kilgrave opened his mouth and spoke. He told Jessica he couldn’t actually tell. He hadn’t meant to hurt her, or take away Jessica’s free will, but she was too canny to believe him.   He came back the second time to make her suffer – until she agreed to stay.

On his third trip to New York, Kilgrave doesn’t look at women – he’s soft, always soft - the damage too extensive even with the rings gone, and because he’ll see Keira in their faces. He understands compulsion from the other side, Erik forced him to see it, feel it from their perspective, and he can hate the other man for that too, for stripping away the comfort of his lies.

Erik took everything from him – _he took everything_ – and then months later, by piecemeal, Erik fed it back.

In New York, Kilgrave’s angry all the time, and the sheer level of it protects him from the people on the street. It’s the loudest emotion in the city, it’s _his_ emotion _,_ and fiercely, Kilgrave guards it. There’s a vein throbbing in his forehead, coloured purple like a bruise.

Kilgrave doesn’t practice skimming like he did with Erik; in fear he’ll find a will stronger than his (strong like Erik’s) and sink. He stays secluded in-house, helping Albert with the experiment. He stays hidden.

The first trial is nothing flashy. Albert gives him an injection, through the back of the neck, into the brain, Kilgrave vaguely recalls this used to be excruciating when he was kid – but it appears his tolerances for agony have climbed through the roof.

Apprehensive, Kilgrave takes the lift to the ground floor. He stands on the sidewalk, slouched against the building with his hood on, dressed in Abercrombie and Fitch again, unrecognizable from twelve months earlier.

A man marches by, in mid-conversation, and Kilgrave says: “Stop, there. What is your phone number? Good, good. Walk three blocks over and wait in the nearest café, order a coffee, and don’t leave until I tell you.”

Kilgrave supposes he could have tried a nightclub, with music playing loudly so no one would have heard his talking voice; if he spoke over the mike and told everyone to do jumping jacks, he would have known one way or another if it worked.

But that’s a little too cocky and Kilgrave took a dent - or a major collision - to his ego this last year. He gives the gent fifteen minutes and then rings: “Hello, could you leave the café, please?”

“I can’t,” a voice answers immediately. “I have to wait here until I’m told.”

Thunderous, Kilgrave hotfoots it upstairs. “It didn’t work!” he bellows.

White-faced, Albert says in distress. “I’ll try again!”

Second and third experiments go much the same, except instead of waiting in the café for ten hours; they wait fifteen hours, and the next time, until closing. “The compulsion is lasting longer, almost twenty-four hours, that’s something,” Albert tries to reason. “Something is changing.”

“I need it to pass through technology,” Kilgrave answers, grimly. “It’s not good enough.”

The last injection Kilgrave takes to the brain hurts like a motherfucker.

The next morning a girl, maybe fourteen, wanders toward the café at eleven o’clock in the morning, she returns, ten minutes later, with a milkshake in hand.

“Yeah, so? What do you want?” she says, snippily.

Jubilant, Kilgrave laughs. He flips his phone mid-air and catches it one-handed, hitting the end-call button. He wants to celebrate, he could eat cake! He could dance a jig, and he really, really, wants to jerk off. He beams at the brat, honestly, truly, happy for the first time since -  “Nothing,” Kilgrave grins. “Go away, you truant.”

Kilgrave darts across the road, aiming for the park. _It works_ , he thinks, ecstatically, _it actually works._

He has to look up the number, but there’s a girl Kilgrave desperately wants to meet and this seems to be his day for endless miracles. “Hello? Could you fetch me Miranda Mercell, please?”

It’s a good morning.   People walking their dogs, joggers flying by on the footpath, feet striking the earth in a fast beat. Hot dog vendors sell their wares, and kids lead balloons around by the string. Kilgrave circles the park, then tells a couple to leave their bench-seat. He sits as they vacate, his feet tapping impatiently as he waits.

“’Lo?”

“Medusa,” he intones, over the line. “You’re just the girl I wanted to see.”

“If you come near me, I’ll regenerate you back into infancy!” Miranda snaps, quick as a lightning bolt.

Startled, Kilgrave pulls the phone away from his ear.  “Can you actually do that?”

“No. It hasss to be sssame body massssss, I could take you back to late teensss, or early adulthood, like Erik,” Medusa replies earnestly, and then adds, with dawning realisation: “Oh…oh, _ssshit_.”

Smiling, Kilgrave says. “Please don’t.”

Kilgrave didn’t grow into his body until he was almost thirty, it was excruciating enough the first time around, gangly elbows, bony knees, sunken torso. His metabolism ran too fast to gain weight; he had too much energy to contain.   No way in hell does he plan to revisit the earlier stages of his life.

Except for one thing.

“A facelift is not what I want. What I do want is for you to meet me at Central park at 2:15 tomorrow afternoon. Don’t tell anyone at the school where you’re going, or why. Come alone. You never spoke to me, do you understand?”

“Yesss.” Medusa says, strangled.

The silence on the phone is heavy, pregnant with expectation.

Kilgrave pauses, on the verge of hanging up. There’s no reason why Medusa _shouldn’t_ have mentioned the name – she was talking about regeneration on a mass scale – far as Kilgrave knows, only one person has been subjected to that. Dropping the name mid-sentence is reasonable, given the discussion, but he’s looking at the sign-posts on the street, the metal cars, and his heartbeat thumps once, loud as a percussion drum, suspicion worms in his gut. Recklessness is what got Kilgrave caught in the first place.

“Tell me,” Kilgrave says, edgily. “Is anyone in the room with you?”

“Casssio,” Medusa says, straight away. “Ssshe sssaid sssomeone wasss on the line for me, ssshe essscorted me into the office.”

“And who else?”

“Magneto.”

Kilgrave hangs up. He takes one lurching step backward and drops the phone.

His heart jackrabbits, shoulders rounding in a hunch. He’s expecting the park railings to melt like a Dali painting, metal twisting around, hooks grabbing for his ankles. He’s expecting to be speared through. The sound of traffic is dim, and it takes him a while to hear his own voice, chanting repetitively. “You’re not wearing metal.” Nothing on his frame, nothing on his person, Erik can’t pinpoint his exact location; he has no idea where Kilgrave is. Erik is at Xavier’s school, miles and miles from here.

Kilgrave turns on his heel and bolts.

He takes the side-alley at a runner’s pace, vaults over a chain-link fence, and takes the back entrance. He pushes up the stairs, taking them three at a time. A yacht, he thinks, something made out of fibre-class, refitted with marine-grade plastics later on.

He wants to be far away from here, in the middle of the ocean. He’s going to make himself untraceable. Kilgrave’s had thirty years of practice at disappearing; he was very, very good at it until Jessica, and his shining moment of idiocy. Kilgrave had a notion to make himself whole, to be fully functional, but he can live with the pieces.

The pieces are fine.

“What is it!” Albert cries, when Kilgrave flies through the door.

Kilgrave stares at his father, his deathly white face, and remembers the promise he made as a child. Only one of his parents is currently dead.

Erik made a vow as well, to avenge Charles, and if Erik’s here, if he didn’t put a bullet in his mouth with the rest of the soldiers in that derelict building, then Erik’s priorities are sorted. They’re sorted, Kilgrave repeats, and Erik can’t sense him in the city.

Slowly, he forces himself to relax. Kilgrave only gave Erik two available choices, and he made it out alive.

His heart is still beating fast, on the knife-edge of panicking, but he can send Erik a gift, kill two birds with one stone – closure for his childhood, and ensure Erik continues his hunt elsewhere. He’ll fetch Miranda later, when things have cooled down. Kilgrave can wait. He’s learnt the art of patience.

Kilgrave wants space between the two of them, and the whole bloody world isn’t big enough.  

 

&&

 

 

By two A.M. Kilgrave has a yacht lined up, a small crew on-board, and the cabin fully stocked. He takes the owner with him to avoid the attention of a stolen property alert. Gabe will shoot himself in the head in a week’s time; somewhere amidst the Indian ocean his body will become fish-food.  

Kilgrave’s not a good man, neither kind nor decent. Something found in the commonweal of humanity is absent – it never existed to begin with - but three months with Erik cured Kilgrave of any notion toward extended torture. Quick, immediate, no fan-fare, a clean death for Gabe instead of telling him to swim ashore. This new preference of Kilgrave’s is something Jessica might approve of.

Killing quickly is the only mercy he knows. The rest of the crew are under compulsion to sail, but they’re sailors at heart, there’s no horror in yearning for the sea.

On a dock with the fog rolling in, Kilgrave stands at attention, turning Gabe’s phone over in his hand. He punches in the number one digit at a time. It rings once, twice, a third time. Erik answers on the fourth.

“Are you lying down?” Kilgrave asks, straight away.  Tight with anticipation; his eyes have narrowed, as if he could see Erik through sheer force of will, determine if it worked.

Very deliberately, Erik says. “Your voice sounds different…like you’re in the same room with me.”

_And that wasn’t the question he asked._

_Fuck._

Kilgrave’s knuckles turn white, the phone creaking in protest.  It could be a year ago, the two of them trading barbs through a cell-glass window; it could be three months ago – tangled in the sheets together and sweaty – Kilgrave, voice lighter, teases:   “Do you sleep with that thing on?”

“I have a _terrible_ crick in my neck,” Erik agrees. “I missed you in Central Park...I did come, took a look around.”

Kilgrave’s skin crawls. Erik’s in the city, or was, and his sense of fun dissipates. Alarmed, his heart speeds up again. “Are you protecting the girl?”

“Someone has to sit on her until your compulsion fades; the children are our future, as Charles would say.”

“Huh. I think I swallowed mine.”

Kilgrave doesn’t care to remember his dreams. He preferred the nightmares, the ones in the cell, to the newer images: of Erik’s smile, of being the brunt of his terrible consideration, and those other times; the unexpected kindnesses; the sex, the comfort of being accepted.  

He can’t afford to be in the same city as Erik, even one the size of New York. He’ll fall, Kilgrave despairs – the anger’s the only thing protecting him. He needs time to shore up the damages done.

The pause goes on too long, when Erik continues his voice has dropped an octave. It wraps around Kilgrave like pure sex; it does things to him. It makes his blood rush, it makes his cock - useless – grow soft and long, Erik sounds drowsy, half asleep. “Come back. It wasn’t all bad between us. We were good together, Kevin: you know it. I want you.”

If Erik wants him, it’s to string Kilgrave up by his balls again – to suspend him from the ceiling - and that recollection is enough to snap Kilgrave free.  The cell, Erik’s promise to Jessica, they’re the things he has to remember. They’re the only things _worth_ remembering.

The anger banks.

“I just spent the last two months scrubbing you out of my head,” he says, archly. Kilgrave’s taken a page from Xavier’s book: he’s working around his limitations, he’s going to get stronger. As an adult, only two people managed to cage Kilgrave – Jessica’s method no longer works. “I’ve no intention of becoming your slave.”

He has his freedom. If the empathy is an unattached leash, Kilgrave’s compulsion will see no one gets close enough, stays long enough, to snag it. He can’t afford to be lazy. Erik was a remarkably good tutor in that regard, he can’t sit on his laurels anymore.

One of the crewmembers waves him aboard.

Kilgrave jerks his head in acknowledgement.

“But I do have something for you, a parting gift, to keep you busy. Albert Thompson is arriving at Sydney airport tomorrow, one of the original co-founders of the CHX-1 virus. Dear old Dad will present himself at the Opera House, twenty-four hours from now. If you fly out of the country, if you’re quick enough, you might be there in time to catch him. I’m sure Albert will recall names, maybe tell you who signed the research grant to begin with, back in the day.”

Erik’s single-minded in his focus – the contagion, killing it dead before the scientists change the format, before it targets more than just telepaths, is everything. He’ll take Albert. He’ll run with it because Erik is pragmatic; he’ll destroy the disease before it mutates. And if Kilgrave’s not there to help, Erik will resort to the tactics he used once before, blood and a lot of pain.

Erik sounds wide awake now. “Why don’t we meet at a club, beforehand? I have one in mind: it even has a room with your name on it. We’ll find your dad as soon as we sort a few things out between us.”

Telling Erik to fuck himself with his own power seems to have left a bad taste in his mouth. Kilgrave can’t help grinding the jab in: “Were you sore? I wanted to watch…if only I had a video-tape.”

Sometimes the sheer vastness of it takes his breath away, everything Erik forced between them. He’s so fucking angry, all the time; in between the belligerence, the fear, and the need to crawl somewhere safe, he’s always mad. There’s no one to fold into for safe harbour, and whatever kindnesses once existed are long burnt.

Erik’s words sound like a vow. “It won’t end well. Not if I have to find you.”

“If I catch so much of a whiff of you, Erik, I’ll use Xavier’s children like my own personal army. Not everyone has a helmet; I’ll send every mutant in the school after you. One is bound to succeed; one of them _will_ kill you. Take the gift and leave the soddin’ country.”  Kilgrave hangs up. He drops the phone into the harbour-water and clambers on board the yacht. Wide awake, Kilgrave’s not slumbering in a child’s fantasy; he’s known all along it wouldn’t end well, even if he did get confused in the middle.

“Sir,” the first-mate says. “We’re ready to head off. Is there a particular name I should address you by?”

Kevin Thompson, empath, died in a facility between ages seven and ten, Kilgrave walked out of the same building with compulsion running like wild-fire through his veins.

He chose his name formed on a promise. Come tomorrow, it will be a fact - paid for in his father’s blood. He has no doubt that Erik will kill Albert; whether he buries Dad in a shallow grave is another matter.  

“Set sail,” he replies absently.

He can remember Jessica mocking him – was Murdercorpse already taken? – but she had a point about choosing flamboyant names. At ten he thought Kilgrave was dramatic and sinister. At forty-five it sounds like the name of a man who gave up, let himself be buried, smothered over. He’s outgrown both those childhood monikers, and he doesn’t want to draw attention.

“Peter Darkly,” he decides, and smiles like the moon, sickle bright, forever out of reach. “Pleased to meet you.”

Erik Lensherr can go to fucking hell.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

&&

 

(He dreams sometimes. He dreams of water, wet-cells, of the rip-tide current of the ocean - of the sinuous cradle of a boat, rocking - warm as living flesh. He dreams of the way Erik used to stroke him, from wrist to forearm, in a bid to get Kilgrave’s attention.

He dreams of emotions sloughing away like dead bodies from a yacht…until only a creeping void remains.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Story finished in the previous chapter - this is just flotsam and jetsam - bits or pieces that don't fit the narrative or were left over.

This story - in terms of 'plot' - finished in the previous chapter. A few people asked for a continuation, which I've now separated from the main bulk of the story because it doesn't have anything going for it, other than some badly written smut. If you're curious, you can find the link to the sequel below under the title 'One Layer Thin'. And deep thanks to everyone who read, and commented, on this story throughout

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Aftermath of the Contagion](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6837685) by [Christyflare](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Christyflare/pseuds/Christyflare)




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